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Comment by paganel | Hacker News Reader

Europe still has coal, lots of it, not using it is a political choice and a self-inflicted wound.

It does not. That is not economically mined. Last big hard coal producer in EU - Poland, has extraction cost x2 or x3 of the mountain top removal mining in US. This sector is shrinking rapidly. Poland coal production came back to ~1915 levels (taking into account current PL territory). This sector would be closed already if not for massive subsidies.

Last year, China's coal use decreased, while China installed 300x more renewables than nuclear. Coal and nuclear aren't cost competitive with renewables, either in a free market or a technocratic top-down economy. Coal and gas still maintain a valid niche of firming intermittency. But that niche is temporary and shrinking.

> either in a free market o

Then why all the anti-coal mining diktats coming down from Brussels?

The free market installs a tiny amount of coal, and a lot of renewable energy. Whether you believe this means "coal is/isn't cost competitive with renewables in a free market" is a debate about word definitions that I'm not terribly interested in.

Brussels is trying to reduce "tiny" to zero, because of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

China, like Brussels, is trying to reduce coal for similar reasons. They don't like the air pollution health hazard (fully believable), and they say they don't like global warming (somewhat believable).

Large Combustion Plant Directive: coal incompatible with both traditional air quality measurements and CO2 emissions.

Renewables deployment is happening fast. Grid upgrades are not. Batteries .. it depends.

Even nuclear darling France has set solar records: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/04/15/france-germany-set-da...

Of all the coal consumed per year, China uses half of it. They are not a green economy.

They are greening fast, and enabling greening of others through cost competitive supplies.

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