China’s transition. The world’s business.
In Focus
Power, transport and industrial systems as renewables, electrification, storage and efficiency reshape costs, reliability and investment.
In This Section
The five-province Southern Regional Electricity Market now has formal operating status after more than a year of continuous settlement trials, giving businesses a clearer regional framework for long-term contracts, spot exposure and settlement.
A proposed export-control revision covers 12 photovoltaic technologies; while final prohibitions and licences await the formal catalogue, temporary registration now reaches technology transfers, foreign-control changes and listed key equipment.
The city links carbon control to project review, sets a 1.2 efficiency ceiling for new computing facilities and says it will strive to aggregate 5,000 local footprint datasets, while leaving key company rules to later measures.
August prices differ sharply by electricity production year. Existing annual matching rules make claim eligibility a practical purchasing constraint, while the cause of the price spread remains uncertain.
A revised national rule makes watershed dispatch, emergency handoffs and inspection records central to hydropower safety, while retaining the existing 50 MW scope.
China’s revised power-accident regulation moves safety governance toward prevention, wider grid participation and evidence that can survive an investigation.
New trading data show scale, but the harder corporate question is whether green power can be matched, traced and delivered in a form that changes production decisions.
A renewed consumption tax is small in headline terms, but it makes technology choices and tax treatment more important across an already competitive battery supply chain.
The capacity milestone is real. Its strategic meaning depends on grids, flexibility and how clean electricity is delivered when the system needs it.
A new cross-agency plan links computing growth with energy efficiency, renewable-power use and more accountable infrastructure planning.
bne IntelliNews' report on renewable curtailment puts a hard number on the next phase of China's energy transition: 8.6% of solar output and 9.1% of wind output was curtailed in the first half of 2026, according to the National Energy…
Energy Connects' Aug. 25 report on PCG Power's planned trading platform points to a quiet but important change in China's renewable market. Developers are starting to look beyond the simple sale of generated electricity and toward forecasting,…
The week's most important China ESG signal was not another capacity headline. It was a reminder that the clean-energy buildout is now constrained by the system that has to absorb it. Reuters reported that China turned away enough clean energy to…
China's coal policy is not disappearing; it is being tightened. Carbon Brief's Aug 20 briefing, together with related analysis of the 15th five-year coal plan, shows a more disciplined approach to the fuel that still anchors power security. The…
China's renewables story is moving away from a simple utility-scale narrative. Carbon Brief reported that the 15th five-year plan for renewables calls for more than 300GW of distributed new energy over 2026-30, or about 60GW a year. The key…
China's latest oil and gas planning signals a managed transition, not an abrupt exit. Carbon Brief's Aug 20 briefing said the new plan focuses on energy security and peaking oil consumption in tandem with the gradual integration of lower-carbon…
China's low-carbon logistics story became more concrete this week. Seatrade Maritime reported on July 6 that the country's first end-to-end zero-carbon sea-river intermodal container corridor entered operation, with the 10,000-tonne-class…
China's solar industry is facing a new kind of policy pressure. PV Magazine reported that China has published three mandatory national standards covering energy consumption and efficiency across the photovoltaic value chain, from polysilicon and…
China's new energy vehicle market has reached the point where policy support is being rebalanced. CnEVPost reported on July 3 that plug-in hybrids, extended-range vehicles, battery electric commercial vehicles and fuel-cell commercial vehicles…
China's clean-energy story is entering a harder phase: the system must now absorb what it has built. The NDRC and NEA plan, highlighted again in the State Council's Jul 3 policy roundup, says China aims to basically establish a clean, low-carbon,…
China's EV boom is creating a second industrial story: the battery afterlife. Caixin reported on Jun 30 that recycled critical metals supplied enough material in 2025 to meet more than a tenth of China's power-battery production needs. The report…
China’s climate-finance story this week moved from the power sector into the factory gate. On Jun 15, Chinese state media reported a new three-year drive to cut energy use and carbon emissions in key industries. The indexed policy coverage…
China’s green-power transition is entering a pricing test. On Jun 18, the National Energy Administration reported that the 2025 China power market development report had been released and that a national unified power-market system has been…
China’s renewable buildout remains extraordinary. On Jun 18, the National Energy Administration cited the China Renewable Energy Development Report 2025 as saying that China’s renewable-energy additions reached a new historical high in 2025 and…
China’s climate transition is national in targets but provincial in execution. Carbon Brief reported on Jun 18 that China’s provincial-level governments have now published their 15th five-year plans for 2026–2030. Its search-indexed summary notes…
China’s green-energy transition is entering a less comfortable but more important stage. The easy headline is still capacity: more solar, more wind, more batteries and more visible industrial scale. The harder question is whether the system can…
China’s hydrogen story is becoming more local. Carbon Brief’s Jun 11 China Briefing highlighted provincial energy-plan signals that are more specific than national slogans. According to the indexed summary, Hunan calls for promoting hydrogen…
SNEC 2026’s most important message may have come from the floor plan. Cailian Press reported that storage-themed halls outnumbered PV cell and module halls, that pure-PV sellers had fallen sharply, and that many firms were repositioning as…
China’s May auto data point to a widening gap between domestic pressure and export momentum. Indexed summaries of CAAM’s Jun 10 release report that total auto production and sales in May were 2.616 million and 2.629 million units, down 1.2% and…
China’s green-power agenda is becoming industrial and local. Official interpretations of the Industrial Green Microgrid Construction and Application Guide 2026–2030 define industrial green microgrids as integrated systems that provide green…
Focus event: on June 1, five Chinese agencies issued a trial guide for non-fossil energy electricity-consumption accounting, linking green-power transactions, green-certificate cancellation and 2026-and-later consumption statistics.
Focus event: the 19th SNEC International Solar Photovoltaic and Smart Energy Conference opened in Shanghai on June 2 amid industry losses, excess capacity and calls for a system-capability pivot.
Focus event: on June 2, Sina Finance reported on the State Council’s Urban Renewal 15th Five-Year Plan, which sets green and low-carbon transformation among six task areas and defines quantified renovation targets.
Focus event: on June 4, Sina Finance reported a UN University warning that global data-center electricity and water demand could double by 2030 as AI demand expands.
Focus event: First Financial, republished by Sina Finance, reported that Southern Power Grid’s five-province service area hit a record 259 million kW load at 20:21 on May 25, nearly one month earlier than usual.
Focus event: BloombergNEF’s Energy Storage Market Outlook 1H 2026 summary, republished by Sina Finance on May 29, projected global non-pumped-hydro storage additions of 158 GW / 459 GWh in 2026.
Focus event: Xinhua reported on May 28 that Tibet’s clean-energy power capacity exceeded 13 million kW in 2025 and that clean energy accounted for more than 99% of power generation.
Focus event: Sina Securities reported on May 28 that Huadian Liaoning disclosed the limited financial impact of a 25 MW wind-powered off-grid hydrogen project after its share price surged sharply this year.
Focus event: On May 20, the NDRC and NEA issued NDRC Energy [2026] No. 688, expanding green-power direct connection from single-user projects to multi-user projects for industrial parks, zero-carbon parks and export-facing supply chains.
Focus event: Xinhua reported that eastern Inner Mongolia had signed more than 3bn kWh of staggered green-power trading contracts, using surplus cross-regional channel capacity to match renewable output with East China demand.
Focus event: On May 21, the MIIT Equipment Industry Development Center asked NEV producers to complete 2026 safety-hazard inspections covering batteries, assisted-driving systems, monitoring, after-sales service, accidents and safety-system self-checks.
Focus event: National Business Daily reported that NEV diagnosis-device restrictions and parts-key authentication are making independent repair difficult, pushing maintenance and insurance costs higher.
Focus event: First Financial reported that Sungrow signed a 7.5 GWh PowerTitan 3.0 energy-storage supply contract with Masdar for an Abu Dhabi project, plus 2.6 GW of inverters for the South zone.
Focus event: The NDRC and Ministry of Ecology and Environment announced that 2026 National Energy Conservation Week will run from June 15 to 21, with Low-Carbon Day on June 17 and a focus on carbon dual-control work in the 15th Five-Year Plan period.
Focus event: 21st Century Business Herald reported a new trillion-yuan grid investment cycle, with Q1 investment exceeding RMB 160bn and AI load adding pressure to renewable integration.
Focus event: Securities Times/Securities Daily reported that compute-power coordination is accelerating green-power business-model change after the AI-energy action plan.
Focus event: Xinhua reported April NEV sales share at 53.2%, while a follow-up Xinhua analysis said domestic NEV passenger-car sales share reached 61.4%.
Focus event: the NDRC said the second 2026 batch of ultra-long special treasury-bond funding for equipment renewal had been allocated, including energy, transport, energy-saving and recycling projects.
Focus event: four ministries issued an action plan on the two-way empowerment of artificial intelligence and energy.
Focus event: Xinhua explained the 2026 industrial product green-design guide issued by MIIT and other departments.
Focus event: Yicai reported continuing Q1 losses across China’s photovoltaic supply chain.
Focus event: NEA data showed a sharp increase in highway EV charging during the May Day holiday.
Focus event: The National Energy Administration’s April 27 quarterly briefing showed rapid renewable expansion and forthcoming policies on consumption and green-power direct connection.
Focus event: At the April 27 NEA briefing, officials said they would improve green-certificate pricing, study a price index and clarify how green certificates enter carbon dual-control and carbon accounting.
Focus event: On April 30, the NDRC and SAMR issued the 2026 catalogue and implementation rules for China’s energy-efficiency labels.
Focus event: China Securities Journal reported on April 27 that listed banks used their 2025 ESG reports to disclose transition-finance practices in coal power, shipping, steel, aviation and buildings.
Focus event: China released a guideline on higher-level, higher-quality energy conservation and carbon reduction.
Focus event: Xinhua reported National Energy Administration data showing China’s installed power capacity reached 3.96 billion kW by end-March, with solar at 1.24 billion kW and wind at 660 million kW.