China’s draft 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) outlines a major push for clean technologies while maintaining a role for coal to ensure energy security.
The plan raises the share of non-fossil energy to 25% and expands offshore wind, nuclear power and new energy storage.
Beijing also seeks to strengthen its dominance in critical minerals, electric vehicles, batteries and solar manufacturing.
At the same time, coal plants will remain in use through retrofits and flexible operations, even as China aims to peak emissions before 2030.
China’s annual political meetings “Two Sessions” began on March 4, 2026 and are due to conclude on March 11, 2026. The meetings bring together the National People’s Congress (NPC) – the country’s roughly 2,900-member legislature – and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a political advisory body with around 2,170 members.
This year’s gathering is under added scrutiny as China prepares to unveil its 15th Five-Year Plan, a key blueprint for the country’s economic and industrial development. A draft version of the plan has already been released.
President Xi Jinping’s announcement of the new plan in October last year set the tone: it aims to steer the country towards greater self-reliance in science and technology, and “high quality” economic growth, as Beijing describes it.
As both the world’s largest greenhouse-gas emitter and the leading manufacturer of clean technologies spurring on the global energy transition, China is undeniably one of the most significant players for climate action.
China released its new national climate plan in September last year, with a range of targets including the reduction of economy-wide emissions by 7-10 per cent from peak levels.
The 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) will form the backbone of China’s industrial and economic development. Over the coming months, detailed sector-specific plans will be drawn up in line with the final approved framework.
Let’s look at the differences between China’s 14th Five-Year Plan and the draft 15th Five-Year Plan.
The plan includes a continued focus on critical minerals, which are essential for the clean energy transition. It calls for expansion of geological surveys for “scarce energy” and “advantageous” minerals. The government also proposes a ramp up of a “multifaceted exploration investment mechanism”, and increasing exploration intensity, all aimed at creating a mineral reserve location.
As expected, the plan also highlights the goals of strengthening industrial foundations, and building strategic industrial and resource reserves as part of enhancing self-sufficiency and control of industrial chains.
China already dominates several critical mineral industries. At present, it captures the majority of export revenues from processed lithium, handles around 90 per cent of global rare-earth processing, and produces 79 per cent of the world’s refined cobalt. It comes as no surprise that the plan includes measures aimed at maintaining China’s influence in global critical mineral and rare-earth supply chains.
The latest plan reaffirms Beijing’s commitment to expanding “new energy” industries, including solar photovoltaics, electric vehicles (EV), batteries, green hydrogen and nuclear fusion.
These sectors are now central to China’s economic strategy. By 2025, clean energy activities accounted for roughly 11 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product, or GDP.
Despite international pressure regarding industrial overcapacity, the new plan signals that China will continue to scale production to strengthen global market share, secure jobs, and maintain technological leverage.
The country is also actively positioning itself as a key supplier of “global public goods”, making affordable low-carbon technologies accessible to developing nations and presenting itself as an essential leader in global climate action.
Underpinning this ambition are huge clean energy advancements laid out in the plan. On the infrastructure front, the plan calls for the construction of 100 zero-carbon industrial parks, designed to serve as showcase models for emissions reduction in manufacturing.
Despite the acceleration of clean-energy deployment, the plan reflects heightened concerns about energy security.
Coal remains fundamental to the energy system's reliability, especially as the grid grows more complex with the addition of intermittent renewables. Still, China’s carbon emissions are expected to peak before 2030. The plan lays out a target of reducing carbon intensity by about 3.8 per cent in 2026.
However, while the plan calls for “peaking of coal and petroleum consumption,” it does not provide any specific year for the peak or absolute consumption. Additionally, rather than a phase-out, the focus is on retrofitting coal plants through “demonstration projects” like co-firing with biomass or green ammonia. This allows plants to operate flexibly to cover gaps in renewable output rather than providing steady base-load power.
The plan also mentions low carbon renovation projects for coal-chemical industries, a major sector in China’s economy, which was responsible for a12 per cent emissions growth in the sector.
The new plan also reflects the country’s ambitions in artificial intelligence (AI). China accounted for around 25 per cent of global data-centre electricity consumption in 2024, second only to the United States. By the end of 2023, the country had 449 data centres, the largest number in the Asia-Pacific region.
In this context, the new ‘Artificial Intelligence+’ initiative by the government further reflects China’s shift towards economy-wide application of artificial intelligence (AI). The initiative aims to integrate AI across scientific research, industrial production, services, and governance to accelerate technological innovation and expand intelligent applications across sectors.
This approach complements the country’s race to the top in AI. It has already invested heavily in the sector, is a frontrunner in at least 57 out of 64 emerging/disruptive technologies (of which AI is one); and aims to be the leader in the industry by 2030. The country’s AI boom is increasing demand for computing power in the country, and local tech firms are seeing a boost in business as they supply advanced semiconductors for the same.