China’s green energy leader Inner Mongolia starts work on new ‘flexible’ power plants

The Chinese region of Inner Mongolia expects to start work this year on two new “flexible” power plants mixing coal and green energy. The plants, which will provide power to the eastern economic hubs of Shanghai and Jiangsu province, mark a major strategic shift in the use of coal because the fossil fuel will now be used to plug gaps in the power generated by wind and solar energy rather than being the primary source of energy. Inner Mongolia is home to around a quarter of China’s coal reserves but has also established itself as China’s biggest provider of renewable energy. The autonomous region’s energy bureau said the National Energy Administration had approved plans for two power and transmission plants in the Kubuqi Desert. The Shanghai plant will have the capacity to supply 8 gigawatts of solar power, 4.5 kilowatts of wind power, 2.6GW of supporting coal-fired power and 9 gigawatt-hours of new energy storage. The Jiangsu plant is of a similar scale, although it has a slightly smaller wind and energy storage capacity, the regional authorities said. The total investment for both plants is around 127 billion yuan (US$18.4 billion). The region is planning to build more mixed-energy plants. Meanwhile, the two plants will provide eastern China with around 72,000GWh of electricity each year by 2030, of which 60 per cent will be generated by renewable energy sources. “[This initiative] will significantly advance the green transformation of the energy structure, support energy conservation efforts and contribute to emission reduction across eastern China,” the regional authorities said. “[It will also] improve the cross-regional allocation of high-quality power resources and ensure the power supply and grid security in eastern China.” Inner Mongolia accounts for 57 per cent of China’s exploitable wind energy and 21 per cent of its solar energy potential. China is pursuing a two-pronged strategy, with coal-fired power being used as a safety net and grid stabiliser given the instability of renewable sources. Used in this way, coal could protect the country against energy crises such as the one it faced in 2021, when power supplies to 20 provinces were affected. “China is strategically repositioning its coal fleet [of power plants] from being a baseload generator to a source of system flexibility,” global energy think tank Ember said in a report released last week. “As wind and solar installed capacity expands rapidly, the need for power system flexibility is becoming increasingly urgent,” it said. “China is on track to retrofit its entire existing coal fleet for flexibility in the next two years.” The report added that once this was done, China would have to shift quickly to maintain that flexibility without increasing coal capacity. “If the deployment of clean flexibility fails to match the pace of renewable expansion, the system risks relying on additional coal capacity to fill the gap, increasing the risk of reduced efficiency and locking in emissions beyond 2030,” the report said. But it concluded that because China had installed nearly half of the world’s battery energy storage, the country had “great potential in meeting its flexibility needs with non-fossil sources”. According to Arif Aga, director of global renewable engineering consultancy SgurrEnergy, China leads the world in renewable capacity additions, adding more than 250 to 300GW of solar and 70 to 90GW of wind generation per year in 2024 and 2025. “China’s pace reflects not only domestic energy policy, but also its leadership in global solar module and battery manufacturing,” he said. The United States and India, which are among the other top greenhouse gas emitters, were also investing heavily in renewables, Aga said. “While India is among the fastest-growing renewable markets, China remains the clear global leader in absolute scale, with the US positioned as a strong but structurally different market driven by private-sector procurement and policy incentives,” he said. He added that while China was driven by manufacturing leadership and scale, India was fuelled by rapid capacity buildout and policy support, and the US had a diversified mix with distributed and storage-linked growth. “In 2025, India added approximately 37.9GW of solar and 6.3GW of wind, reflecting one of its strongest annual growth years and reinforcing its position as one of the fastest-growing renewable markets globally,” Aga said. “This growth is supported by large utility-scale solar programmes, expanding hybrid projects and increasing focus on storage-enabled capacity.”

China’s green energy leader Inner Mongolia starts work on new ‘flexible’ power plants

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The two plants will use coal as a backup to renewable sources such as wind and solar power in a major strategic shift

The two plants will use coal as a backup to renewable sources such as wind and solar power in a major strategic shift