China is going through a renewable energy revolution. In 2025 alone, it added about 450 gigawatts (GW) of clean energy capacity, more solar and twice as much wind as the rest of the world combined.
Before 2010, China had only limited renewable energy. Today, electricity generated from huge wind and solar farms scattered across mountains, deserts, rooftops and off the coast accounts for a quarter of electricity generation.
The country achieved its target of adding 1,200 GW of wind and solar capacity to the grid by 2030, five years ahead of schedule. China produces more than 80% of the world’s photovoltaic panels, helping to lower costs and accelerate the clean energy transition globally.
Tim Buckley, director of Climate Energy Finance, an Australian think tank, says its quest to escape dependence on foreign oil and gas has been the main motivation for the rapid expansion of domestic energy sources and electrification.
Buckley said Beijing invested early in electric vehicles and batteries. Fossil fuel-free vehicles now account for more than half of total car sales in China, while in the EU the share is about 19%.
But the clean energy boom has not displaced coal, the most polluting fossil fuel. The country remains the largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world and continues to exploit its vast coal reserves in the pursuit of energy self-sufficiency. China consumes more than 50% of the global supply, partly because it is the only fossil fuel it does not have to import.
In January and February 2026 alone, China added 20 gigawatts of coal-fired power capacity, almost half the amount of new renewable energy added over the same period. This partly explains why the country is not on track to meet its 2060 carbon neutrality target, according to Carbon Tracker, a climate think tank.
The contradiction is at the center of scrutiny of China’s latest five-year plan (5YP), a policy blueprint that will shape the economy until 2031 and determine whether the country can meet its climate pledges and help curb planetary warming.
The New 5YP: A Coal and Renewable Energy Balancing Act
In 2015, China signed the Paris climate agreement, which aims to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) or preferably 1.5C compared to pre-industrial levels. The country then committed to achieving maximum CO2 emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060.
For Beijing to achieve those goals, the Climate Action Tracker says China needs “clear targets for coal consumption reduction” in its new 5YP. However, the economic roadmap released in March was “not clear about how fossil fuels will be regulated,” said Qi Qin, a China analyst at the Finland-based Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
Although Chinese President Xi Jinping promised to detail coal energy use reductions in a 2026-31 plan in 2021, it contains “no clear phase-down plan, no clear fossil fuel limit,” said Qin. “The language is much more conservative than many people expect,” he told DW. One reason for this is the continued influence of the powerful coal lobby on Chinese government policy.
The 5YP calls for China to become an “energy superpower”, but does not specify the scale of future renewable expansion. At the same time, a government statement on China’s “new energy system” for 2025 states that clean energy, including batteries, is expected to provide primary baseload electricity in the future, with retrofitted coal plants serving as flexible back-up.
Despite concerns that China is not yet on track to meet its Paris climate targets, there are signs that its emissions growth may be slowing. The country’s CO2 emissions decreased slightly (0.3%) in 2025, continuing a flat or downward trend through 2024. According to an analysis conducted by the climate website Carbon Brief, clean energy sources have reversed China’s emissions “for the first time”.
Emissions fell across all major sectors, including transport (3%), while coal power generation also declined slightly due to a 43% increase in solar power generation between 2024 and 2025.
The International Energy Agency said low-carbon electricity sources, renewable energy and nuclear power have sustained excess electricity demand in the country and will likely continue to do so until 2030.
Analysts such as Tim Buckley now believe that coal power and emissions have already peaked and stabilized, although others are more cautious. He says China has traditionally been conservative in its climate commitments, while pursuing a steady “long-term strategy” built around unprecedented clean energy expansion.
“There is potential for China to accelerate its ambition,” Buckley said, “even though the government has been unclear about its goals and has been reluctant to become a global leader on climate mitigation — even as the U.S. has abrogated its climate role under Donald Trump’s fossil-fuel-focused U.S. presidency.”
New commitment to get rid of fossil fuels
New Chinese government guidelines on fossil fuels released on April 22 support the view that the country is ready to move away from limited fossil fuels, strengthen energy independence and still achieve its climate goals, Qian says.
“The new central guidelines talk about strictly controlling fossil fuel consumption, reducing coal, and controlling oil. It still leaves room for flexibility, but these are solid policy levers,” Qin said of the document.
While coal has underpinned decades of rapid expansion, China set its lowest economic growth target this year since 1991. Kin says this reflects a recognition that climate targets will be difficult to meet without a relative economic slowdown because emissions are closely linked to growth.
The April “guiding opinions”, which are not binding, also outline how more clean energy can be absorbed into the system as China upgrades its grid to better transmit renewable electricity.
Qin says there was a rush to commission 161 GW of new coal-fired power plants before the guidelines were issued because there was a growing realization that coal power use “will definitely decline in the future.” China’s coal-fired power plants are running at low capacity, and some are losing money, raising the risk of stranded assets as the energy transition accelerates.
While China’s decarbonization trajectory is being shaped by economic and energy security imperatives rather than just climate goals, analysts say the results could be similar. Qin said renewable energy expansion is now a core component of China’s economic model, with the industry expected to contribute one-third of GDP growth in 2025.
China’s focus on selling solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicle batteries to the world has increasingly shifted toward deploying clean technology domestically, Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, a policy think tank, wrote in an online post.
“China’s clean-technology development, rather than traditional administrative climate controls, is increasingly becoming the primary driver of emissions reductions,” Shuo wrote.
Edited by: Jennifer Collins