Baroness Bryony Worthington (Advisor and Founder of Repower Initiative) recently attended the International Society for Energy Transition Studies (ISETS) Conference in Nanjing, China. Over 400 participants from more than 20 countries attended the 4-day event, including senior academics, policymakers and energy experts from across ASEAN, China, and Japan. Bryony delivered a keynote speech on fast-tracking the global coal power transition through the repowering of coal-fired power plants, explaining strategic pathways necessary for reducing coal reliance worldwide, and policy and financial models which can support this shift.  

Bryony offered her powerful vision on China’s urgent coal transition challenges, including fragmented governance and the need for regional cooperation, policy guidelines around energy storage, and how to meet development goals while maintaining a safe climate. She also joined a high-level panel discussion with experts including Nobuo Tanaka, former Executive Director of the International Energy Agency,  Prof. Ye Qi, former Director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Centre for Public Policy, and Dr. Xiansheng Sun, ISETS Chairman and former Secretary-General of the International Energy Forum.

Along with Dr Muyi Yang from ISETS,  Bryony explored insights from a newly published Repower Initiative report entitled ‘Coal Powering in China: Governance Challenges and Possible Solutions’, (authored by Muyi Yang, Professor Xunpeng Shi, Yadong Wang, and Lixia Yao from ISETS), and discussed Yang’s recent research: ‘Thinking Beyond Diversification: Next Steps in China’s Coal Power Transition’.  

Join the conversation: How can we foster inclusive, clean energy transitions in regions still heavily reliant on coal, such as China? What roles will technologies such as nuclear and advanced geothermal play in accelerating the clean repowering of global coal assets?

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Coal Repowering in China:

- Burning more than 4 billion tons of coal in 2023, China is the world’s largest consumer of coal, at nearly 55% of the world’s total coal consumption in 2022. --- Between 2020 and 2023, non-fossil fuel capacity in China surged by about 60%, exceeding 1,570 GW, more than half of the country’s total installed capacity. - The decline of coal power affects a massively interwoven coal-electricity ecosystem, including coal production and supply, logistics, the coal chemical industry, equipment manufacturing, power generation, and local economies dependent on coal. China’s transition away from coal is complex and disruptive. --- China’s electricity sector governance is fragmented, requiring extensive negotiation between central ministries, large state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and local authorities. The energy transition is not a top-down and authoritarian process.

- China’s five largest SOEs in energy collectively control over 1,360 GW of capacity, which is more than half the country’s total. As these SOEs diversify into renewables, there must also be comprehensive strategies on ensuring coal-dependent regions and workers are supported through reskilling and economic diversification.

- Repowering has currently gained little traction in China, due to an entrenched focus on renewables, nuclear capacity expansion in coastal areas, and building system flexibility into coal plants (encouraging them to pivot away from being base-load electricity providers to supporting renewables).

- Repowering Chinese coal plants with nuclear energy or other alternatives could act as an insurance policy against uncertain technological developments in carbon capture or green hydrogen scalability, providing energy security, and protecting livelihoods.

- There are two possible pathways to repowering coal assets in China:  

1. A top-down pathway where repowering may be incorporated into central policy guidelines in China, incentivising SOEs to pursue repowering projects.  

2. A bottom-up pathway with trial projects in regions on the periphery of the coal-electricity ecosystem in China, such as Guangdong which is experiencing rapid electricity demand growth, and has limited local coal resources.

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