A new report says China’s power industry began construction on nearly 100 gigawatts of new coal plant capacity last year, the most in nearly a decade.

If a countrywide power outage occurred and took longer to restore, the primary cause of both recent and past islandwide blackouts would be the failure of the country’s three coal power plants, energy expert,

China started construction on 94.5 gigawatts of coal-fired power in 2024, the highest volume of new builds since 2015, hampering the country's transition away from fossil fuels, researchers said in a report published on Thursday.

China’s coal plant construction surged last year to the highest level in almost a decade, conflicting with President Xi Jinping’s promise that carbon emissions would peak before 2030, researchers have said.

China began construction last year on projects with the greatest combined coal power capacity since 2015, jeopardising its goal to peak carbon emissions by 2030, according to a report published