The long-term bet doesn’t look too much different as China will burn coal for a long time to come. Even the government itself admits that as proposals to build coal-fired plants in China reached a record high in 2025:
The report, released by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Global Energy Monitor (GEM), says that, in 2025, developers submitted new or reactivated proposals to build a total of 161 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power plants …
The co-authors argue that while clean-energy growth may limit emissions from coal power in the short term, the surge in proposals could lock in new coal assets, “weaken…incentives” for power-system reform and help keep coal capacity online in spite of China’s climate goals.
The high rate of new proposals, the study says, likely reflects a “rush by the coal industry stakeholders” to develop projects before an expected tightening of climate policy in the next five years …
The vast majority of such proposals are getting approved, and the report finds that the approvals for coal power “continue to reflect expectations of high operating hours."
This comes as China already burns more than half of the world’s coal, and it has been increasing its coal production as well as its coal imports and coal consumption. A record of 95GW were already added to the grid last year and another 291GW are in the pipeline. These Chinese coal plants are already operating, and they are large-scale units.
According to the co-authors, this is the “reverse of what we see outside China, where roughly two-thirds of proposed coal capacity never makes it to construction”.
Therefore, the assumption that China having a decentralized grid of renewables is simply wrong.