Kingdom Of Solar, Wind, Hydro, Nuclear And Coal

For more than a decade, energy and climate analysts have portrayed China as a bipolar entity. On the one hand, they point to it as the world leader in renewable energy, spearheading the Energy Transition. On the other hand, they bemoan it as the globe’s greatest user of coal and, as a result, the largest source of carbon emissions.

Both claims are true, undeniably so. China has not only installed more solar and wind capacity than the rest of the world combined, it is also leading exporter of these technologies and a key reason for their decreasing prices. At the same time, Chinese coal consumption is nearly 5 billion tons a year, also more than the total by all other nations, its emissions now well beyond those of the US plus Europe.

China thus presents the world with a paradox. How can one country be both the best

and the worst when it comes to climate action?

Economics And Technology Do Not Determine All Energy Decisions

Let me first say that in taking up this question, my effort is to explain, not excuse or rationalize, central aspects of China’s energy situation.

The China Paradox is best understood as a both a national vision and a lens to focus fundamental realities about the Energy Transition.

These begin with the fact that energy choices made by national leaders are largely, if not entirely, political decisions. This might seem obvious. But it comes with potent nuances.

One of these is that energy choices are matters of national security. This, too, might appear evident. But consider: every modern military on the planet is powered by oil. This renders it a national concern of relentless and immediate importance—all the more so in an era of failing international norms and rising conflict among regional and global powers,

A second truth is that each nation has its own portfolio of domestic energy sources. If Norway benefits from both hydropower and hydrocarbons (oil and gas), Kenya has abundant geothermal potential, while Jordan has high solar irradiance. What does this tell us? The Earth is diverse in distributing its gifts, such that nations are not likely to accept only one or two sources, whatever they may be, for all their energy needs.

A third point, often overlooked, is that energy use has a strong cultural dimension. Behavioral and identity norms, not just technology and economics, are often central to such use—norms related to lifestyle, food, personal transport, living space, entertainment. A simple but consequential example: Americans like big homes, Europeans are ok with less, Japanese still less.

China Is Not Different But It Is Unique

How does this relate to the China Paradox? It first needs to be put in the context of Beijing’s plans for the future.

The place of energy in the government’s Five-Year Plans has been central for nearly two decades. In 2022, as part of the 14^th Plan, it released a document specifically devoted to energy. What binds this document to prior Five-Year Plans and to the newly released 15^th version for 2025-2030, is the emphasis on supply security.

Translated into practical terms, supply security means a number of things. For China, it means increased self-reliance and reduced import dependence. These goals are shared by a large number of nations, wealthy and non-wealthy alike. But in the Middle Kingdom, they have a distinct historical context and contemporary flavor.

They fit directly into the national vision for returning China to a destined position of world power and leadership. A “Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation” is the phrase often used in this regard, coined in 2001by Jiang Zemin, China’s leader at the time, who also repeatedly invoked the “century of humiliation” idea.

Under Xi Jinping, these views have found an aggressive form. This defines the West as both a permanent rival to China’s own ascendancy yet also a formidable, if fading, success whose triumphs and failures must be learned from.

How Does This Translate Into The Details Of Energy Planning?

Let’s take failures first. Chief among them are examples of over-dependence on imports, not least for oil and gas. The EU allowed itself to become excessively reliant for these sources on one nation—Russia—and found itself in an enfeebled position when it chose to end this after the invasion of Ukraine.

More important for China was the case of its main rival. America’s growing oil dependence on Persian Gulf nations resulted in the transfer of some $1.2 trillion to autocratic regimes. “Foreign oil” not only stood as an inexorable problem of national security, it made US calls for democracy and human rights look hypocritical at best.

What about triumphs? Following the pattern first set by Japan, China has accepted the West as a forge of valuable technologies to be borrowed, adapted, made cheaper, and exported both to the originating countries and the rest of the world. Starting in the 2000s, this included, for example, solar and wind technology, dam building, electricity transmission (e.g. high-voltage direct current), and more recently hybrids and EVs, ultra-supercritical coal plants, and advanced nuclear reactor designs.

This also involves technologies from Western oil and gas operations. Examples include extracting methane from coal beds, hydrocarbon liquids from coal, and since 2011, the use of horizontal drilling and fracking technology to develop domestic shale zones. All these have proved successful adoptions.

In some cases, Chinese engineers have modified the original technology to suit its specific needs. Using a toolkit of financial and other supports, Beijing has greatly aided “strategic” industries—solar and wind, EV, and nuclear being well-known examples.

Though less often discussed, the role of nuclear in China’s overall vision is central. The goal is to have a fleet of over 200 full-size reactors by mid-century—it now has 59, with 34 being built—more than Europe (165) or the US (94), plus a large but unspecified number of small modular types, using advanced and next-generation designs. This is to provide an essential baseload replacement for coal, as its use for electricity declines. It will also serve to reduce air pollution and stabilize the grid as partner to solar, wind, and hydro. Finally, there are plans for nuclear to become a major export industry as wel.

In adopting and adapting western technology, China, as I noted, has pursued the model of Japan, also followed by Taiwan, Singapore, and Korea. But there is a key difference. None of these other nations have the abundance of energy resources that China does—major river systems (for hydropower), vast deserts (for solar and wind), a wealth of critical minerals, as well as oil, gas, uranium, and the world’s second largest coal reserves after the US.

Overall, China has developed the potential for a high degree of energy self-reliance. This potential, however, has yet to be realized and faces challenges. This is where the paradox starts to make sense.

An Energy Paradox Explained

In concise terms, China seeks a state of durable and evolving energy security through transition. This means maintaining large-scale, slowly declining coal use, its largest domestic source, while rapidly building a low- and zero-carbon portfolio of natural gas, renewables, and nuclear power. The key operating principles are to improve and profit from self-reliance, while reducing emissions and adding to China’s global influence. Multiple goals, in other words, that converge on the ideas of energy security and political-economic power.

The Achilles heel in this overall vision is the same as it was for the US and EU: imports of oil and gas. These have now reached over 70% and 43% of demand, respectively, with Russia the largest supplier of both. As the world’s largest oil importer, China hopes to see its demand reach a peak or plateau with the further rise of EVs, use of liquefied natural gas in trucks, and, to a lesser degree, production of methane and liquid fuels from coal. As for natural gas, the Chinese benefit from domestic production, now 60% of consumption, but demand is growing and self-sufficiency seems unlikely anytime soon.

China’s level of risk is therefore far from zero. Its main supplier, Russia, is engaged in a self-destructive war where its refineries, tankers, and ports are all targets for Ukrainian drones. A recent period of low oil prices and sanctions that prevent Russia from gaining full market value for its exports have also acted to reduce export revenue by 22% or more compared with 2024. Putin wants a massive new pipeline, Power of Siberia 2, to carry a flood of Arctic gas to eastern China, but Beijing has been lukewarm.

For the present, its leaders believe coal gives China a hedge against import dependence, as its non-carbon sources expand, integrate, and eventually come to dominate. The country’s system of coal extraction, transport, and use is immense by any standard global or historical. It has a penetrative dimension in China’s industrial and labor culture, as a primary fuel or feedstock not only in steel and cement, but in fertilizer production, aluminum refining, paper and pump manufacturing, textiles, glass and ceramics, and for process heat generally. Estimates suggest the greater coal system involves hundreds of thousands of companies and more than 20 million jobs. The actual figures could well be larger. If there is a power crisis, as happened repeatedly between 2020 and 2023, the impulse is to build more coal powerplants, whether it makes economic sense or not.

Beijing now believes that rapidly replacing coal would create social disruption and angry dissent, outcomes that Beijing greatly fears. Such dissent was widespread and, in a few cases, violent during the early 2010s when urban air pollution caused soaring cases of heart and respiratory disease, as well as more than a million premature deaths per year. This was addressed the 2013 Clean Air Action Plan, but the lesson for social disharmony was clear.

China’s Lesson For The World

An article like this cannot hope to cover the many complexities of China’s vast energy system and ideas. It can, however, emphasize that, overall, its success in achieving core energy goals, while impressive in some ways is less so in others. In addition to what has been said above, there has been more than a little disorder and muddling through–conflicting messages and incentives between Beijing and local officials have created difficulty, as have market-related troubles.

Yet, the vision of seeking self-reliance through advanced technology while profiting in economic and geopolitical terms, remains firmly in place. It is this energy nationalism and its results, viewed from the climate perspective, that has brought China to the point of representing both the “best” and the “worst” of what has been achieved.

What might this signify for other nations, for the world? There is no final conundrum in China’s coal use and striving to increase every non-carbon energy source, i.e. solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear. Political leaders in charge of national energy policies will remain unlikely to devalue near-term energy security, given its role in national and economic security as well as social stability, to demands for rapid decarbonization.

China’s lesson, in short, suggests that the balance between these two realities—one rooted in the present, the other in the future—will continue to be elusive and a matter of struggle. Yet, he China Paradox, which is no paradox, tell us that the world is more than

likely to deal with the climate problem this century, though not in time to prevent more serious impacts. The bigger story is that progress in global energy change may not be speedy, cheap, uniform, or linear, and is likely to face setbacks, but it is already real and will continue to be so due to local and national decisions guided by global urgency.