China saw a 2% increase in carbon emissions during the first quarter of 2026. Despite record installations of wind and solar capacity, the country burned more coal and gas to meet energy demands because of rigid grid management.
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This is a classic curtailment problem. You can build all the solar farms you want, but if the transmission lines and dispatch rules are stuck in the 90s, that power just vanishes. What is the actual percentage of curtailed wind and solar in these provinces?
The issue is the contract structure. Long term agreements for coal plants create a floor for production that ignores the marginal cost of renewables. Until they move to real time pricing, the incentive to burn coal remains regardless of how much wind is blowing.
Wild to see emissions jump back up after a decline in 2025. It shows that capacity additions are not the same as actual decarbonization if the grid cannot handle the load.
The scale of the waste is the real story here. Wasting an amount of power equivalent to France's total quarterly output is a massive failure in infrastructure planning.
