Plans for 2026 indicate they will continue to pull industrial levers to bring about the green transition, but with a primary focus on economic growth.
China’s new Government Work Report, presented by Premier Li Qiang on 5 March, includes a “green development” aim for the year ahead:
“Guided by our goals of achieving peak carbon emissions and carbon neutrality, we will make coordinated efforts to cut carbon emissions, reduce pollution, pursue green development, and boost economic growth, while strengthening our green development drivers.”
The previous month, the 31 provincial-level governments had published their plans for 2026. Dialogue Earth reviewed the energy and technology sections of these plans and discussed them with experts.
With over half of the provinces expecting reduced GDP growth and revenue, encouraging economic growth and demand is seen as a key task. Overall, there is a focus on integrating into existing industries the roll-out of energy storage, hydrogen power, wind and solar power, and AI and robotics.
Energy storage, hydrogen power and nuclear power grab attention
Until early 2025, rapid expansion in energy storage had relied on rules requiring storage to be part of new wind and solar projects. When that requirement was removed, storage became dependent on market forces. That did not lead to a significant fall-off in energy storage expansion and the sector is still growing, as Dialogue Earth has reported.
This is borne out by the provincial plans. Of the 31 provincial governments, 19 are planning battery-based energy storage projects. If pumped hydro storage is included, 25 of the plans include energy storage projects.
However, of the 19 with battery storage plans, only Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Shanghai and Heilongjiang have set quantified installation targets, with the others focused more on associated manufacturing and technology. Of these, Guizhou, Hunan, Anhui and Sichuan mention development of electric vehicle batteries, along with robotics and energy storage.
Jiangxi is to develop solid-state battery technology, while Liaoning is to focus on boosting its manufacturing of green hydrogen and ammonia, which can store renewable energy in chemical form for later use.
Anders Hove, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, told Dialogue Earth that “energy storage is now driven by the market rather than targets or regulations… Currently, spot market liquidity is weak and mechanisms encouraging the use of energy storage are lacking. Nevertheless, the energy storage market has performed well since the changes early last year.”
Perhaps the most interesting focus is hydrogen power. Projects related to the gas feature in 21 of the provincial plans, with a shift from pilot projects to industrialisation.
For example, Jilin, Inner Mongolia, Yunnan, Liaoning and Ningxia all talk about “green hydrogen” – made using renewable power and synthesised into green ammonia and ethanol for use as fuel.
Jilin is preparing to advance five large “integrated green-hydrogen-based energy projects”, that can generate renewable power and use it to manufacture hydrogen fuel. While Ningxia is working on a “hydrogen and ammonia valley” project combining production, distribution, use and storage.
In some cases, the hydrogen sector is working across provincial borders. In 2025, Inner Mongolia and Liaoning completed a long-distance hydrogen pipeline. This year they are planning parallel hydrogen, ammonia and methanol pipelines from Chifeng to Jinzhou, to support Liaoning’s construction of a storage, distribution and refuelling facility for green shipping fuels. Also last year, a “hydrogen corridor” was created linking Chongqing, Guizhou and Guangxi.
China’s nuclear power sector grew rapidly last year and it features in the new annual plans of coastal provinces Guangdong, Shandong, Liaoning, Fujian, Zhejiang, Guangxi and Hainan. Each has multiple nuclear power plants under construction, due for expansion, or in the planning.
While the inland provinces of Anhui and Sichuan aren’t building nuclear power plants, their technology plans do include research into nuclear fusion. Anhui is due to complete the infrastructure for an experimental nuclear fusion reactor this year.
Solar and wind still important
China’s solar power manufacturing sector experienced cut-throat competition in 2024 and 2025. For 2026, 14 provinces have specific plans for solar projects but there is now more of a focus on making use of the power generated and on manufacturing, rather than building big solar farms.
Only Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Gansu and Qinghai now mention large solar farms. These are all in the less densely populated north-west of China, which has rich wind and solar resources. Most of the projects are carried over from the last five-year plan period (2021-2025), rather than being new additions. Inner Mongolia, though, is preparing to build six major solar farms and hoping to plan for another three.
Others are emphasising complementarity rather than simple expansion. Sichuan, Shanxi, Fujian, Shandong and Guizhou all stress the construction of large solar and wind farms but with a focus on integration with hydropower, wind power and coal power, reducing curtailment and creating a new electricity system. Shanxi, a major coal-mining province, stresses the combined development of coal power, renewables and energy storage, along with green industrial zones and encouraging the take-up of green electricity.
Yunnan, Anhui, Zhejiang and Liaoning, which could be regarded as the “industrial” group, all plan to develop their solar manufacturing industries and exports. Yunnan aims to use its cheap hydro, wind and solar power to drive silicon refining and manufacturing. Liaoning, meanwhile, plans to use solar to drive development of green hydrogen and ammonia industries.
The story is similar with wind. Thirteen provinces have explicit plans for wind projects, only some of which also have solar plans. These can be divided into three types: wind power farms, consumption of wind power, and manufacturing.
There is, however, still a trend towards big wind farms, especially offshore. Big offshore projects are included in the palns of Shanghai, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, Shandong and Liaoning. In Zhejiang, private investment is being encouraged, with a required minimum 10% stake.
Hu Min, chair and joint founder of the China Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress, says that ending unhealthy competition within the renewables sector requires technological innovation and high-quality growth. She says China still does not have enough wind and solar power for carbon neutrality, and consumption and curtailment issues still need to be addressed.
‘Zero-carbon parks’ to bloom
“Zero-carbon parks” and industrial zones are planned or already being built in 28 provinces. The idea is that production from businesses within the parks and zones will produce “near zero” carbon emissions and, where possible, none. Guidelines require 90% of consumed power to come from clean sources and 80% of solid waste to be recycled.
Of China’s industrial businesses, 80% are located within an industrial zone, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Data from early 2025 shows there are over 2,500 provincial or national-level industrial zones nationwide.
Tsinghua University’s Li Xiaofeng has written that those provincial and national industrial zones contribute more than half of all industrial value – but also account for 31% of carbon emissions. In 2025 and again this year, “zero-carbon zones” was somewhat of a buzzword.
In December last year, the government published a list of 52 pilot zero-carbon zones. According to Yicai.com, these will be completed between 2027 and 2030. Once up and running, carbon intensity of energy used will apparently be only one-tenth of today’s average for industrial zones. While at least 50% of the electricity used must come from “captive” green sources, meaning generated exclusively for use by the zone, according to a spokesperson for the National Development and Reform Commission.
However, there are few details on these zones in the provincial plans, just some numerical targets: Shandong says it will have 20 provincial or national zero-carbon zones by the end of the year; Zhejiang aims for 20 provincial zero-carbon zones and 150 green factories. More common are statements of intent. Guangdong, for example, says it will “promote the construction of national zero-carbon zones.”
Electricity supply remains a challenge. Nan Cunhui, director of the Chint group, which makes electrical appliances, says there are no mechanisms in place for setting power prices for zero-carbon zones. The captive power they use is supplied directly to the zone rather than via the grid. It usually comes from power plants close by, but sometimes travels across a provincial border, making pricing complicated.
Powering AI and robotics
AI, robotics, and the associated “smart economy” were the real star of this year’s provincial work reports. Dialogue Earth found 30 provinces mentioned AI, 20 robotics, and 17 “embodied AI” – that is, robots with AI capabilities.
Many provinces have detailed plans for these, linked to economic benefits and existing local industries. For example, Guangxi is developing AI models for the nonferrous metals and sugar industries, and is considering exporting robots to Southeast Asia countries, which it neighbours. It is also to build a training ground for embodied AI, with a target of producing 5,000 humanoid robots this year. Shanxi, meanwhile, is looking to use AI in its coal-mining industry.
All this will require a lot of electricity. According to Pangoal, a Chinese policy think-tank, data centre power consumption will continue to see big increases during the 15th Five Year Plan period (2026-2030). It estimates a maximum consumption of 600 terawatt-hours, or 5-6% of all national generation, in 2030. China is already responding, for example by requiring data centres powering AI to use green electricity for at least 80% of their consumption. Some provinces, such as Shandong, are using AI technology to optimise their power grids.
Anders Hove says China’s data centres may need to make more use of renewable energy, but a lack of grid flexibility is the key issue. “Currently, guidance is that monthly and annual contracts should dominate nascent power markets and transmission scheduling, which leads to inflexibility, and AI and smart grids can’t change that.”
Other issues
The most important task for the next five years is hitting the 2030 peak carbon goal. The provincial plans only give an indication of what’s happening with carbon emissions – specific policies at the industry and province level will come later.
Hu Min thinks provincial governments may already have been given specific emission cap targets by Beijing. But he thinks these won’t be made public because the State Council had earlier said the focus of the next five years will be on carbon intensity (emissions per unit of GDP). It will therefore be necessary to look at provincial emissions-reduction and energy-saving plans, and how those are implemented, she says.
Anders Hove thinks changes in market signals are more worthy of attention: “Just looking at government plans may not give enough insight into the future developments in the sector, especially when these are driven by the market, technology cost improvement (renewables, batteries, EVs), or when the government at local or central levels make ad hoc adjustments”.
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