TAIYUAN — For decades, Shanxi province has been synonymous with coal in China. The northern province sits at the heart of the country's energy system, supplying fuel and electricity to factories and cities far away.

Now it is also becoming a test site for something else — whether China's energy transition can work in areas that are heavily dependent on fossil fuels.

In 2025, Shanxi crossed a symbolic threshold. According to the annual session of its provincial people's congress that opened on Monday, Shanxi's installed capacity of new and clean energy reached 90.48 gigawatts, accounting for 55.1 percent of the province's total power capacity, overtaking coal-fired generation for the first time. In practical terms, roughly one-third of the electricity consumed in Shanxi now comes from clean energy sources.

As one of the country's largest comprehensive energy bases, Shanxi ranks among the nation's top coal producers, and its power plants supply electricity to 24 provincial-level regions through long-distance transmission lines. The province has long played a stabilizing role in China's energy system.

The role is now undergoing a recalibration. Under China's dual carbon goals — peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060 — energy-producing regions are no longer just suppliers, but front-runners in reshaping the national energy mix.

As of 2025, the share of renewable energy in China's total installed power capacity had risen to over 60 percent. Consequently, coal is no longer positioned as the primary driver of growth in electricity supply, but rather serves to underpin the system's stability when renewables fall short.

Resource-heavy provinces often face a double constraint: they must cut emissions without undermining output, and diversify without destabilizing local economies. Shanxi has taken a pragmatic approach to achieving these goals.

Shanxi has relied on a twin-track approach: shrinking inefficient coal capacity while rapidly expanding renewables. On the coal front, the province phased out more than 4 million kilowatts of outdated coal-fired units between 2021 and 2025, while bringing six million-kW-level new units online. The result is not less coal power, but cleaner and more efficient coal power.

At the same time, renewable capacity has expanded rapidly. According to the provincial energy administration, wind and solar installations have recorded double-digit annual growth for several consecutive years, pushing both installed capacity and actual power generation higher.

Qiao Junwei, professor at the College of Materials Science and Engineering, Taiyuan University of Technology, noted that as a coal powerhouse, Shanxi's choices ripple across China's energy system. Its embrace of clean power sends a clear signal: if even the fossil-fuel heartlands are reorienting around renewables, regions with fewer conventional resources have little excuse not to do the same.

"The change is not merely statistical. It reflects a broader realignment in the relationship between energy transition, economic growth and environmental governance in Shanxi and beyond," Qiao said.

Industry experts note that the next step is to enhance the efficiency of clean energy utilization and to build a larger power grid with greater flexibility and balancing capacity.

For Shanxi and other energy-rich regions, smarter grids, renewable energy collection hubs and pilot schemes for direct green-power supply to industrial users would allow coal and clean power to be combined more effectively, improving the power system's flexibility in balancing supply and demand and raising the share of renewables that are actually consumed, according to Sun Yuhan, head of the Shanxi Research Institute of the Huairou Laboratory.

Xinhua - China Daily