Clean Energy Surge or Coal Comeback? China’s New Energy Plan Sends Mixed Signals

China has revised its renewable energy targets for 2025–2030, with the goal of doubling non-fossil energy within ten years. By closely examining China’s revised renewable energy targets for 2025, the latest research by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) removes ambiguity around the country’s renewable energy goals, highlighting an ambition to double total non-fossil energy use from 2025 to 2035.

While evaluating the implications of China’s 15-Year Plan, CREA found that the revised plan appears more ambitious than China’s existing targets of reaching 25% non-fossil energy by 2030 and 30% by 2035. The research further notes that if total energy demand grows at around 2.5% per year, the share of non-fossil energy would need to reach 29% by 2030 to deliver the required reduction in carbon intensity.

CREA’s research also notes that the draft plan for 2026 will mark the first year of China’s transition from controlling energy consumption to controlling carbon emissions. However, China currently offers only a CO₂ intensity target, with no target for total emissions, and lacks clarity on how the new system will be implemented. As a result, the targets create uncertainty and leave room for emissions to continue rising.

Ambiguous Signals on Coal

Digging deeper, CREA found that China’s revised plans call for “promoting the peaking of coal and oil consumption.”

According to the research, this reflects a shift in China’s policy stance and appears to walk back President Xi’s 2021 commitment to gradually reduce coal consumption, instead targeting a plateau. This leaves space for coal consumption in the power and chemical sectors to grow beyond the targeted peak of overall coal consumption.

A statement on “strengthening the clean and efficient utilisation of fossil energy” is also included in the plan. According to CREA, this is essentially code for expanding the highly carbon-intensive coal-to-chemicals industry, which has been a major driver of China’s emissions growth. The policy direction also signals a push to strengthen and upgrade major chemical industry bases, indicating continued support for the sector’s expansion.

Other Key Takeaways That Weaken RE Ambition

CREA’s research also highlights that the 15th Five-Year Plan lacks binding caps on coal consumption in the power sector with a declining trajectory toward 2030.

Similarly, CREA notes the absence of any explicit power-sector emissions peaking target that could ensure emissions from the power sector do not increase during 2025–2030 and provide a binding constraint against further coal power expansion.

The research further recommends that achieving key climate targets would require limiting the net growth of coal power capacity at the beginning of the five-year period. This could be done by halting approvals for new and reactivated coal power projects and tightening permitting standards for projects that are still in the pipeline.

The previous five-year plan called for “reasonably controlling the scale and pace of coal power development,” but this formulation is absent from the current plan. Similarly, there remains a lack of clarity regarding the retirement of ageing, inefficient, or persistently underutilised coal power units.

China’s planning agency also highlighted that growth in electricity generation from renewable sources in 2025 surpassed the annual increase in China’s total electricity consumption for the first time. However, the plan does not mention the ongoing transition of coal power from a baseload generation source toward a more flexible, supporting role in the proposed “new-type power system.”

The plan does refer to replacing 30 million tonnes of coal consumption annually with cleaner alternatives. However, the scale of this effort remains modest compared with China’s overall coal consumption, which reached 3.17 billion tonnes in 2025.

Clean Energy as a Key Driver for Emissions Reductions & Economic Growth

Throughout the plan, there is significant emphasis on the role of clean energy not only in driving the energy transition and reducing emissions but also in supporting economic growth.

A new action plan aims to double non-fossil energy within ten years. If this translates into doubling total non-fossil energy use from 2025 to 2035, it could be significantly more ambitious than China’s current targets of 25% non-fossil energy by 2030 and 30% by 2035. It also offers a more actionable planning target and represents a potential step forward.

However, if total energy demand grows at around 2.5% annually, the share of non-fossil energy would need to reach 29% by 2030 to deliver the required reduction in carbon intensity. Despite this ambition, the target remains purposefully ambiguous.

Building a “new-type power system” remains another key objective. Such a system would be designed to integrate large amounts of variable wind and solar energy and would rely on storage, smart grids, inter-provincial electricity trading, and large-scale transmission networks.

This includes plans to “vigorously develop” battery energy storage and build 100 GW of pumped hydro storage. The plan also targets the continued expansion of massive clean energy bases, which have been a major driver of solar and wind development over the past five years. These include the northwestern desert bases, which have dominated development so far, as well as a new emphasis on bases in the hydropower-rich southwestern provinces that combine solar, wind, and hydropower.