China has spent the last decade positioning itself as a global leader on clean energy. Officials point to record-breaking solar and wind installations and a national goal of hitting peak emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. Yet a closer look at the numbers tells a very different story. China is not simply balancing renewables and coal during a transition period. It is expanding both at the same time, and coal still dominates the system that actually powers the country.
What a Megabase Really Is
China’s energy strategy centers on what are called renewable energy megabases. These are enormous wind and solar farms built in sparsely populated regions such as Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Gansu, where land is cheap and renewable resources are strong. The problem is getting that electricity from remote deserts to the crowded cities on China’s coast. That job falls to ultra high voltage direct current transmission lines, which are designed to move huge amounts of power over long distances.
Here is where the gap between image and reality shows up. Wind and solar currently supply only around 20 percent of the electricity carried through this transmission network, a share that has barely moved since 2021. Coal, on the other hand, accounts for 42 percent of the power moving through the same lines. In other words, the infrastructure meant to showcase China’s clean energy transition is still mostly running on coal.
Coal Is Being Built Into the Future, Not Phased Out
If coal were simply a temporary backup while storage technology matures, that might be defensible. But the newest megabase transmission projects suggest otherwise. The eleven transmission lines currently proposed for these megabases would combine 129 gigawatts of wind and solar capacity with 40 gigawatts of coal generation. On paper, that looks like renewables dominate. But capacity is not the same as actual power delivered. Coal plants run around the clock, while wind and solar only generate when conditions allow, so based on projected electricity volumes, the power actually transmitted through those lines would end up split almost evenly between coal and renewables, despite renewables having more than three times the installed capacity.
Aiqun Yu, senior East Asia strategist at Global Energy Monitor, put it plainly: “The high proportion of coal is hard to square with policymakers’ framing of coal as having only a supporting role in China’s power system.” Rather than relying on batteries or other storage to smooth out the natural ups and downs of wind and solar power, China keeps building coal plants into the very projects meant to symbolize its green transition.
There are glimpses of a better path. A proposed transmission line linking the Kubuqi Desert to Shanghai would pair renewables with 9,000 megawatt hours of storage and just 2.64 gigawatts of coal, far less than the roughly 4 gigawatts typical of comparable projects. Yu called it “a small step forward,” but stressed that scaling this model up will depend on cheaper storage and grid reforms that reward flexibility instead of default coal use.
What China Has Greenlighted
The broader construction record makes the pattern even clearer. In 2024 alone, China began construction on 94.5 gigawatts of new coal power capacity, the highest total in a decade, and revived another 3.3 gigawatts of previously paused projects. Approvals accelerated through the year, jumping from 9 gigawatts in the first half to 66.7 gigawatts in the second half. Most of these new plants are backed by coal mining companies themselves, an arrangement that all but guarantees continued demand for coal well past 2030.
Meanwhile, coal retirements have slowed sharply, falling from about 13 gigawatts a year in 2020 to just 2.5 gigawatts in 2024. China is not winding coal down. It is locking it in for decades.
Why the Claims Ring Hollow
China’s solar capacity reached 890 gigawatts and wind capacity climbed to 520 gigawatts by the end of 2024, genuinely impressive figures. But those totals are dwarfed by 1,200 gigawatts of coal capacity still in operation (again, operating 24 hours). Long-term coal supply contracts and power purchase agreements continue to guarantee coal a place in the grid even when cheaper renewable power is available, and renewable curtailment, the practice of idling clean power the grid cannot absorb, is likely underreported. Official figures place it at 3.2 percent, while independent estimates put it closer to 5.5 percent.
The Bigger Picture on Emissions
China remains the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet, responsible for roughly a third of the global total, and it accounted for 93 percent of new coal construction worldwide in 2024. There has been a modest bright spot: emissions appear to have flattened or even ticked down slightly since early 2024, thanks to the sheer scale of renewable additions. But a small dip after decades of growth is not the same as a genuine transition away from fossil fuels.
The gap between China’s clean energy messaging and its coal investment decisions is not a matter of interpretation. It shows up directly in gigawatts, transmission lines, and construction permits. As Yu noted, the real measure of success will not be how much renewable capacity China adds, but how much coal it actually displaces. On that measure, the record so far falls well short of the rhetoric.