China’s use of coal for electricity grew in the first half of 2026 as a record amount of wind and solar power was wasted through curtailment, new research has found.
The world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter brought 30 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power capacity into operation in the six months to June and coal-fired generation rose 3% after falling last year, according to a report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Global Energy Monitor (GEM). Only 2.7GW of coal power was retired in the same period.
The coal expansion stems from a surge in power plant approvals that followed power shortages caused primarily by high coal prices in 2021, when blackouts and factory shutdowns hit roughly 20 Chinese provinces. Local governments responded by fast-tracking new coal projects as insurance against future outages.
A further 274 GW of coal capacity – equivalent to roughly a fifth of China’s existing coal fleet – is already either under construction or has permits to be built, meaning much of the sector’s expansion is locked in for years, the report says.
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“Climate concern”
Qi Qin, the report’s author, said the coal lock-in is a “climate concern”. “After coal power plants are built, they will seek revenue and operating hours for decades and that can crowd out clean power and slow the retirement of the older coal power units,” she added.
The coal buildout is happening at the same time as Beijing signals a gradual shift in its energy rhetoric. In a document published last April, the Chinese government called for the country to “reasonably control” both China’s capacity to generate electricity from coal and, for the first time, how much electricity it actually generates from coal.
China has also pledged in its latest five-year plan to cut carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product – known as carbon intensity – by 17% between 2026 and 2030. It plans to reach net zero by 2060.
But, according to Qi, there is still a real gap between the direction of national policy and what is happening on the ground.
Growing renewables curtailments
While China generated less than half of its electricity from coal for the first time in the six months to last June, growing demand for electricity meant coal power generation still rose 3.4%, reversing a roughly 1% decline recorded in 2025, the report said.
Available clean electricity from solar and wind, which have seen a record expansion in China, would have been more than enough to meet the extra demand and drive coal power down if it had been fully used, the report said. Instead, the amount of clean electricity wasted kept growing.
Estimated rates of curtailment, the intentional reduction of electricity from a source, for wind and solar were up by about a half in the six-month period compared to last year, wasting the equivalent of Indonesia’s annual electricity output.
Coal’s protected status
Researchers said that was caused by the Chinese grid’s inability to absorb the additional clean electricity, in addition to energy contracts and pricing mechanisms skewed in favour of coal power.
Chinese coal generators are required to sign long-term contracts covering a fixed share of the previous year’s output, now standing at 70%. Qi said that, out of fear of electricity shortages, regulators introduced these arrangements to protect coal power plants by guaranteeing them predictable prices and utilisation rates.
Additionally, China has also begun paying coal plants to stand ready to generate electricity, rather than for actually running, through new capacity payments introduced this year.
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Qi said that, while each of these mechanisms has a legitimate purpose on its own, they now combine to give coal power excessive protections. “When renewables are abundant, they [coal operators] don’t have the incentive and are not required to ramp down,” she added.
The report suggested lowering, or even suspending, coal-specific contract minimums in provinces that are experiencing clean energy being wasted or prolonged periods of zero or negative electricity prices. That would help coal transition to a more flexible backup role and facilitate the integration of renewables, the researchers argued.
They also urged the Chinese authorities to halt permits for new coal power projects and reassess those that have already been permitted, while favouring grid expansion, energy trade across provinces and storage as ways to boost energy reliability.
The post China’s coal power rebounds as record clean energy goes to waste appeared first on Climate Home News.
China’s coal power rebounds as record clean energy goes to waste
Next week, diplomats from around the world will descend on Yerevan, Armenia, to negotiate a series of decisions under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Between 19 and 30 October, 196 parties will gather to hammer out the precise wording of the dozens of legal texts that make up the decisions under the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the CBD.
This year’s summit is particularly significant, as it marks the halfway point between the agreement of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the deadline for achieving its targets.
The CBD has found that countries are currently not on track to meet 22 out of the framework’s 23 targets.
During the fortnight, delegates will also be negotiating decisions relating to the two supplemental protocols to the CBD: the Cartagena Protocol, which covers biosafety; and the Nagoya Protocol, which covers access and benefit-sharing for the use of genetic resources.
(The Cartagena and Nagoya Protocols, which are each governed by a “meeting of the parties”, or “MOP”, have fewer parties than the CBD as a whole, with 173 and 141, respectively.)
Carbon Brief is tracking the progress of countries towards consensus on dozens of negotiating texts using the interactive table below.
The tracker includes texts from the COP, as well as the MOPs for the Cartagena and Nagoya protocols. It also includes draft decisions from the most recent subsidiary body meetings, as these form the starting point for the negotiations in Yerevan.
The CBD has three subsidiary bodies: the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA), the subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) and the subsidiary body on article 8(j) and other provisions (SB8J).
SB8J focuses on issues related to the Indigenous peoples and local communities. It was established at COP16 in Cali, Colombia, in 2024.
The first two columns of the interactive tracker list the topic of each agenda item and the relevant body, with subsequent columns including dates, page counts and links to the original documents.
The table is searchable and can be sorted using the arrows in the header.
Areas of disagreement in UN draft texts are denoted by square brackets. Counting the brackets in a particular iteration of a text therefore gives a sense of how far parties are from reaching consensus.
The bracket column is colour-coded, with dark green indicating a low number of brackets and red indicating a high number of brackets remaining.
Texts can also present parties with choices using “options” or alternatives (“alt”), which are counted together in the sixth column of the table.
The key discussions in Yerevan will centre around two agenda items in particular. The first is the global review, which will assess progress towards the GBF and make recommendations for accelerating action.
The second is finance, which can be separated into two parts: resource mobilisation and the financial mechanism. On resource mobilisation, biodiverse global south countries are likely to push for an increased amount of international finance for conservation.
Disagreement over the creation of the financial mechanism led to the suspension of COP16 in Cali in October 2024, as parties failed to find agreement on the mobilisation of finance before the end of the summit.
Global south countries want the establishment of a separate financial mechanism under the control of the CBD; global north countries largely prefer to maintain the existing mechanism, which sits under the Global Environment Facility.
At the resumed session of COP16 in Rome in early 2025, countries agreed on a roadmap that would lead to the establishment of a permanent mechanism.
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The post Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP17 biodiversity summit appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP17 biodiversity summit
A beacon of love
On an outer island of Fiji, two thousand nautical miles from Sydney, is a shining light of hope and resilience for our troubled world.
The island of Kioa is home to a Tuvaluan community who migrated from their atoll of Vaitupu in the late 1940s. It is a land of warm hearts, big smiles, and deep cultural roots; a place where the sound of a conch still summons the island together, where islanders paddle out to fish in carved outrigger canoes, and healthy happy children walk barefoot to school.
Here, culture is life. Kioans live sustainably through their traditional knowledge and practices. The island is alive with song, dance and the rhythms of a life tied to the tides, the winds, and the seasons.
Facing the future
Greenpeace has been lucky to have a relationship with Kioa for a number of years now, and we are continually learning from this remarkable community.
Last week, as part of our Voyaging Oceania project, we returned to the island. Our purpose was twofold —- to carry messages from the island to leaders gathering in Nadi this week for the Pacific Pre-COP, and to support the Kioa community in their efforts to improve water security for the island.
Unlike Tuvalu itself, with its eight atolls, Kioa is a mountainous, forested and richly fertile island. It will remain habitable far into the future. Kioans did not initially migrate from Vaitupu due to climate change, but the move was prophetic. They now have a lifeboat.
However, even Kioa faces challenges on our rapidly warming planet, in particular when it comes to water. Climate change is shifting once reliable rainfall patterns. On top of this, the island is already feeling the effect of this year’s intensifying El Niño event, which for Fiji means reduced rainfall and prolonged dry spells.
Right now, fresh water has to be carefully rationed, and is only available for a few hours a day. During last week’s visit aboard our campaigning ship Oceania, Greenpeace was privileged to work with the Kioa community on a new solar-powered water distribution project for the island.
Designed and led by the island, the project involves using a solar pump to move water from a reliable source to a storage tank and then using gravity to distribute the water around the village.
It was a lesson in how local knowledge and ingenuity can be the backbone of today’s climate solutions. To build a dam around the source, the local community knew the exact spot where they could gather gravel at low tide to mix with the cement. They took only what was needed, knowing that all resources must be carefully conserved. Kioa has no roads and no machinery, and it was an all-of-island effort to carry the materials up to the project site, including many heavy bags of sand and rock.
Such projects truly bring to life the vision of a resilient, locally-led, fossil fuel free Pacific.