Coal drops below half of China’s power mix for first time ever

For the very first time, coal supplied less than half the country's electricity over a six-month stretch, according to officials who spoke on Thursday.

China has reached a turning point in its energy story. For the very first time, coal supplied less than half the country’s electricity over a six-month stretch, according to officials who spoke on Thursday.

Between January and June, coal made up 49.7 percent of total power generation. That figure came from Xing Yiteng, a senior official at the energy administration’s planning office. It marks a steep fall from 65.5 percent back in 2016, based on earlier government data.

Clean energy sources picked up the slack. Renewables reached 41.2 percent of the total mix, crossing the 40 percent line for the first time ever. Wind and solar alone made up nearly a quarter of all power generated, a huge leap from just under 10 percent in 2020. The remaining share came from natural gas and nuclear plants.

Despite this progress, experts warn that coal use in raw terms might actually increase this year. Electricity demand across China is rising quickly, driven by more electric vehicles on the road, a boom in AI-related data centers, and steady growth in exports. Beijing has pledged that coal use will peak no later than 2030, with wind and solar expected to reach 30 percent of the power mix by then.

Gao Yuhe, who works as a project manager at Greenpeace East Asia, thinks that milestone might actually arrive two years early, by 2028. She credited this to the rapid spread of home solar systems paired with battery storage, along with more flexible electricity markets that make better use of renewable supply.

China still burns far more coal than most major economies, mainly because it has large domestic reserves and limited natural gas access. For comparison, coal accounted for just 17 percent of America’s utility-scale power output last year, with natural gas covering 41 percent. China’s coal reliance, though, remains lower than India’s, where coal and lignite made up 69 percent of electricity generation last year.

Interestingly, China still imported close to 500 million metric tons of coal last year, even with domestic output reaching 4.83 billion tons, mostly to supply power plants along the coast. If coal consumption keeps falling, major exporters like Indonesia, Mongolia, Australia, and Russia could feel the impact, depending on global price trends.

Meanwhile, coal remains central to China’s coal-to-chemicals industry, where many facilities continue relying on cheap, locally produced coal to stay competitive.