China’s coal power lock-in a sign of green growing pains: Report

SINGAPORE - China is building record amounts of solar and wind power capacity, but a report released on Aug 6 shows just how much of this is sitting idle due to bottlenecks and policies propping up coal use.

According to research by independent non-profits, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Global Energy Monitor (GEM), an estimated 360 terawatt-hours of solar and wind power went untapped between January and June 2026.

That is enough to power Mexico or the United Kingdom for an entire year, based on 2025 consumption data.

This waste is due to “curtailment”, when renewable power output is deliberately shut off or reduced due to grid constraints.

Up 49 per cent year-on-year, the curtailment from January to June was more than sufficient to meet the China’s overall electricity demand growth for the same period.

This is significant because China is the world’s top emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2) and it is banking on an unprecedented build out of clean energy infrastructure to lower its carbon footprint, with the aim of peaking emissions by 2030.

But researchers from CREA and GEM are warning about a coal “lock-in”, which they say is crowding out clean energy in China’s power grid.

“To put it simply, China is adding wind and solar power faster than the power system is becoming flexible enough to use them,” Qi Qin, a policy analyst at CREA who authored the Aug 6 report, told The Straits Times.

“Curtailment is the biggest challenge in China’s energy transition, especially in the power sector. The government fully realises this, so we do see some signals that they are trying to make things better,” she added.

One major headwind is geography.

Most of China’s solar and wind power capacity is concentrated in large projects in the arid northwestern provinces, such as Qinghai, Xinjiang and Gansu, while most of the demand for electricity is concentrated on the eastern coast.

But as of now, there are not enough long-distance high-capacity power lines to move the clean energy produced in these desert bases thousands of kilometres across the country to where it is needed. But this is changing as China spends heavily on the grid.

Incentives needed

Policy protections are another driver of curtailment, CREA and GEM said, flagging long-term contracts that lock grid operators into buying minimum volumes of electricity from local coal plants.

The report argues that these contracts, which cover a large share of electrictiy demand, mean grid operators burn coal even when renewable energy is plentiful and cheap.

One solution is to update the power market rules to reward genuine reliability and remove these minimum requirements for coal, said CREA’s Qin.

“Coal power plants need to be required and incentivised to step back when wind and solar output is abundant,” she added.

Compounding the issue, lingering fears of widespread blackouts have driven a surge in new coal plant construction.

China is now building new coal power plants faster than it is retiring old ones, adding 10 gigawatts of coal capacity for every gigawatt retired, with another 274 gigawatts in the pipeline, according to CREA and GEM research. For comparison, Singapore’s total power generation capacity is about 13 gigawatts.

This expansion stems from a wave of permits approved by local governments in 2022 and 2023, following a severe 2021 power crunch that affected 20 provinces.

Because so many new coal plants have opened, total coal power output rose 3.4 per cent in the first half of 2026, reversing a decline in 2025.

However, individual coal plant usage also dropped to its lowest level since 2021, reflecting that they are increasingly being treated as back-ups.

Globally, China’s coal plant construction matters. It is the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal and has the world’s largest coal power plant fleet. And burning coal is the single largest source of planet-warming CO2.

While the number of countries still building coal plants has shrunk over the past decade, China and India still dominate coal plant development globally, according to GEM.

More plants, less power

CREA and GEM said in their report that China’s continued coal power construction does not mean that coal is regaining its dominance over the grid.

With clean energy growing even faster, coal’s share of China’s total power generation fell to 49.7 per cent in the first half of 2026, marking the first time in modern history that coal supplied less than half the country’s electricity.

Other analysts agree that a broader structural shift is underway.

Muyi Yang, senior energy analyst at global think tank Ember, told ST that China’s fast build-out of clean electricity means the era of simultaneous growth in coal and renewables is coming to an end.

“In a country as big and complex as China, you don’t usually see the change first in the national figures. It tends to show up at the provincial and sectoral levels,” Yang said. “Coal power growth is stalling in a growing number of provinces because clean generation is increasingly meeting new demand.”

Beijing also views renewable energy as key to its energy security strategy, and the government has been taking further steps to better integrate clean energy into the grid.

For example, on Aug 3, China unveiled plans to retool its power system over the next five years to enable it to absorb a far larger share of renewable energy, including solar and wind.

The target is for the national grid to be able to integrate more than 2,800 gigawatts of clean energy by 2030. Under China’s broader 15th Five-Year Plan, the country’s total installed renewable power capacity is expected to hit 3,500 gigawatts by the same year, more than double today’s levels.

While much of this capacity is solar and wind, China is also the global leader in hydro power.

CREA’s Qin said she welcomed the positive policy moves but noted that none of these plans directly impose a binding cap on coal power generation. “While the government is providing many of the right tools, whether they work will depend on implementation,” she added.

Ember’s Yang sees China’s current challenges as a natural byproduct of progress in the country’s energy transition.

“As China gets close to the point where coal use peaks before its structural decline, you naturally start running into harder problems. Grid integration is a big one... (But) it’s just what a transformation on this scale looks like,” he said.

“What will determine future progress isn’t the scale of those challenges. It’s whether the policy toolkit adapts to meet them,” Yang added.

“No one gets policy and regulation right overnight ... Short-term fluctuations in renewable investment or grid integration are likely part of that process, not necessarily a sign the transition is losing steam.”