- China's 15th Five-Year Plan targets a 100-million-tonne annual coal reserve by 2030, but its existing surplus is already six times that size
- Coal still supplies 54 percent of China's electricity and 57 percent of its primary energy despite renewable energy growth
- China began construction on 94.5 gigawatts of new coal plants in 2024, accounting for 93 percent of global new coal construction
- Analysts argue Western net-zero policies have shifted industrial capacity and emissions to China rather than reducing them worldwide
- China's emissions have grown by over 3 billion tons annually even as the US, EU, and UK have cut their own
As Western nations race to phase out fossil fuels, the world's largest coal consumer is doing the opposite: building a strategic stockpile of the very fuel climate activists want to eliminate. China's 15th Five-Year Plan for 2026-2030 calls for creating roughly 100 million tonnes per year of coal production-capacity reserve by 2030, according to the Energy Institute. That target appears modest compared to reality; China's current coal supply surplus already stands at about 600 million tonnes annually, roughly six times the planned reserve. The move exposes a sharp divide between Western climate messaging and Beijing's energy strategy.
Coal remains China's energy backbone despite renewable growth
Chinese coal-fired generation dipped slightly in 2025 but still supplies 54 percent of the country's electricity and 57 percent of its primary energy. Renewables account for just 6 percent of China's primary energy mix. Domestic coal production already exceeds demand by around 120 million tonnes per year, yet Beijing continues expanding coal-to-gas and coal-to-liquids production alongside traditional power generation.
The country's coal-fired power fleet operates at roughly a 50 percent capacity factor, below the global average of about 57 percent. But the dip is a modest one; coal generation fell from 5,836 to 5,755 terawatt-hours last year, a small decline that still leaves coal as the dominant source powering Chinese industry.
Net-zero policies transfer industrial power to China
Western climate policies have inadvertently handed Beijing a strategic advantage, according to analysts Michael Doran and Brenda Shaffer, writing in Tablet Magazine. Manufacturing costs in Germany run 40 to 50 percent higher than in China, with European industrial electricity prices around 20 cents per kilowatt-hour versus 6 to 8 cents in China.
"Climate policy, as practiced, is a transfer of industrial advantage to China," Doran and Shaffer wrote.
They describe the dynamic as simple arithmetic: China adds wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear power without retiring coal, oil, or natural gas, while the West subtracts dispatchable power faster than replacements arrive. The result is higher electricity costs that push energy-intensive industries — steel, glass, autos, chemicals, data centers — to shrink, relocate, or close outright.
In 2024 alone, China began construction on 94.5 gigawatts of new coal-fired plants, accounting for 93 percent of all new coal construction worldwide. The country now burns more coal than the remaining countries of the world combined and accounts for roughly one-third of global carbon dioxide emissions.
Western emissions fall while China's continue to climb
The United States has cut CO2 emissions by about 13 percent since 2010, and the European Union has cut emissions by more than a quarter since 2000. The United Kingdom closed its last coal plant. Yet in the same period, China's annual CO2 output grew by more than 3 billion tons — an increase larger than the European Union's entire current emissions total.
In effect, products once manufactured under Western environmental standards — from automobiles to solar equipment — are now made using power that comes overwhelmingly from coal. Western countries report a decline on their own books, but the emissions haven't disappeared; they've simply moved.
Beijing's energy strategy offers lessons in pragmatism
China has more than tripled its coal production over the past 25 years. Its strategy contrasts sharply with Western approaches: Beijing adds renewable capacity without retiring conventional plants, ensuring grid reliability while expanding manufacturing.
Energy journalist David Blackmon has made a similar argument: that Western net-zero policy doesn't function as a genuine worldwide reduction in emissions. Rather, it closes down domestic power plants and factories, treats China as an environmental leader despite its coal use, and leaves Western consumers dependent on Chinese-made goods built with that same coal power.
The lesson from Beijing's energy playbook may be uncomfortable for Western policymakers, who have spent trillions on a transition that was supposed to reduce emissions and build a domestic clean-energy industry. Instead, taxpayers in the U.S. and Europe are footing the bill for factory closures and higher power prices, while the manufacturing capacity — and the emissions that come with it — has simply relocated to Beijing. Security, reliability, and affordability matter as much as emissions targets, and by those measures, China is winning on every front.
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