Japan is building new plants. You'll see that news a bunch. What you do not see is the why.
Japan has companies which are building new coal plants in order to replace existing plants. Old coal plants have lower efficiency. Old coal plants produce more pollution.
A none trivial reason why so many old coal plants are unprofitable is because other newer fossil fuel plants can out compete them.
Sure renewables play a part, but the single biggest reason those old plants cannot make money at current energy prices is simple competition. New plants are buying the same coal but getting more electricity per ton while using larger and more automated plants. Meaning more revenue per ton with lower overhead.
Coal as a whole will decrease, but along the way new plants need to be built. Yet the media treats all coal plants as a single monolith. "How could a country be building new plants when existing old plants are unprofitable". The media would do well to educate and inform instead.
Old coal plants will presumably be able to operate on the marginal cost of the coal plus maintenance, where as new plants have a big initial capital spending they need to fund.
Now, it is clear that some plants are so old that they're going beyond their planned lifetime and need investments. But that does not seem to be what you are hinting at?
I'm not sure if this completely answers your question, but the Illinois EnergyProf channel on YouTube and some interesting content on modern coal power generation:
The other "why", is that Japan decommissioned a huge percentage of their nuclear power plants after the Fukushima disaster.
Renewable (or at least less dirty) solutions would have filled that gap and prevented the need for even replacement coal plants, if that baseline capacity continued to exist, or grown.
Japan has companies which are building new coal plants in order to replace existing plants. Old coal plants have lower efficiency. Old coal plants produce more pollution.
A none trivial reason why so many old coal plants are unprofitable is because other newer fossil fuel plants can out compete them.
Sure renewables play a part, but the single biggest reason those old plants cannot make money at current energy prices is simple competition. New plants are buying the same coal but getting more electricity per ton while using larger and more automated plants. Meaning more revenue per ton with lower overhead.
Coal as a whole will decrease, but along the way new plants need to be built. Yet the media treats all coal plants as a single monolith. "How could a country be building new plants when existing old plants are unprofitable". The media would do well to educate and inform instead.