In 2025, China moved faster on wind and solar than in prior years, but its electricity system still came to rely on substantial new coal capacity, raising questions about whether the country can cut carbon pollution quickly enough while scaling cleaner power. An Associated Press report, citing a research analysis of energy and air-quality data, said China began operating more large coal units than it has in the recent past—despite the rapid expansion of renewables that, on paper, should have reduced demand for coal-fired generation.
The report said that in 2025 China commissioned more than 50 large coal-fired units—each measured as a set of boilers and turbines with generating capacity of one gigawatt or more—compared with fewer than 20 per year in the decade before that. A gigawatt can supply electricity to anywhere from several hundred thousand to more than 2 million households depending on how power is used, according to the account cited by AP. Overall, the analysis found China added about 78 gigawatts of new coal capacity in 2025.
The contrast is central to the climate concern described in the AP story. It said the world’s largest carbon emitter was simultaneously building large amounts of coal and expanding lower-emitting energy sources, prompting scrutiny of whether coal additions are being limited to supporting roles or instead add to long-run emissions. Christine Shearer, a co-author with Global Energy Monitor, described the construction pace as exceptionally high, saying the scale was “astounding,” and comparing China’s 2025 commissioning output with India’s across the prior decade.
Even as coal capacity grew, the same analysis indicated that China’s generation mix did shift modestly away from coal last year. The AP report said additions of wind and solar reduced coal’s share of total power generation in 2025, with coal’s share falling by around 1% as cleaner sources covered the increase in electricity demand. It said China added 315 gigawatts of photovoltaic capacity and 119 gigawatts of wind capacity in 2025, citing figures from China’s National Energy Administration.
Officials and industry groups have argued that coal remains necessary for reliability. The AP report said China’s government stance is that coal provides stable backup and balancing for variable wind and solar, which depend on weather and time of day. The report also cited recent policy language from the National Development and Reform Commission, saying a guide issued last year described coal as needing to “play an important of support and balancing” role in the years ahead.
The AP analysis traced the acceleration in coal buildout to earlier grid stress as well as subsequent permitting. It said electricity shortages in parts of China in 2021 and 2022 strengthened long-standing concerns about energy security, including temporary factory production halts and rotating power outages in at least one city. The government response, the report said, involved encouraging more coal plants, which led to increased requests and approvals for construction.
Qi Qin, an analyst at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air and a co-author of the report, said the surge in permits in 2022-2023 helped drive much of the major leap in coal capacity that came online in 2024 and into 2025. The AP report said Qin told AP that once permits are issued, projects are difficult to reverse. The report also said coal construction began on 83 gigawatts of capacity last year, suggesting that additional new coal units could enter service this year.
China’s coal expansion strategy carries a potential downside for emissions growth, according to the analysis described by AP. The AP report said Qin warned that excess coal capacity could slow the transition to wind and solar if political and financial pressure keeps plants operating at higher levels than intended. The report said it urged China to retire older, less efficient coal plants faster and, as part of its next five-year plan to be approved in March, to ensure that electricity-sector emissions do not rise between 2025 and 2030.
The AP report framed the remaining emissions question as tied to how coal plants ultimately operate—whether they are truly constrained to backup roles or instead run more like base-load generation. Qin said whether coal expansion results in higher emissions would depend on whether coal’s role is limited to backup and support rather than generation of base-load power. The AP report added that Olivia Zhang, an AP video journalist, contributed to the dispatch.