※ The attached PDF is provided in Korean.

China’s 15th Five-Year Plan, formally adopted in March 2026, marks a shift in the country’s green transition strategy for 2026–2030. Building on the direction set by the 14th Five-Year Plan, it moves further away from a high-speed growth model based on quantitative expansion and places greater emphasis on high-quality development, technological self-reliance, green transition and stronger social services. The most notable change is the elevated status of carbon peaking. While the 14th Five-Year Plan treated the target of peaking carbon emissions before 2030 as a subsection within the environmental agenda, the 15th Five-Year Plan gives carbon peaking its own core chapter, signalling that the dual carbon goals have become central to China’s industrial and energy restructuring.

The plan also changes the basis of energy and emissions management. By shifting from the ‘dual control’ of energy consumption to the ‘dual control’ of carbon emissions, China seeks to ease the contradiction between energy consumption limits and the expansion of renewable energy. The policy focus moves from controlling energy use itself to controlling carbon emissions, allowing non-fossil energy to support rising electricity demand while fossil fuel use is more tightly constrained. On energy policy, the plan introduces a ‘ten-year doubling action’ for non-fossil energy for the first time. It sets a target of raising the share of non-fossil energy in total energy consumption to 25 per cent by 2030, and specifies that grid-connected offshore wind capacity should exceed 100 GW.

The 15th Five-Year Plan also points to a full restructuring of the power system. Rather than making only partial improvements to the existing grid, China aims to build a new power system that integrates renewable energy, digital technologies, smart grids, large-scale energy storage, distributed energy and market-based power dispatch. Coal-fired power is expected to shift from its traditional role as baseload generation towards a more flexible source of backup and balancing capacity for variable renewables. The plan also gives greater weight to distributed energy and to the coordination of green electricity with computing power, including the use of AI to optimise power supply, data centre workloads and carbon emissions.

However, carbon peaking should not be read as an immediate reduction in absolute emissions. During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, China aims to maintain GDP growth of more than 4.5 per cent while reducing carbon intensity by 17 per cent. Because the projected rate of economic growth exceeds the rate of carbon intensity improvement, total carbon emissions may continue to rise until 2030. In this sense, China’s carbon peaking strategy allows for managed emissions growth before a later shift towards decline. The plan represents a clear upgrading of China’s green transition agenda, but it also shows the tension between continued economic expansion and the timing of absolute emissions reductions.

Author
Moqian Wang | Visiting Researcher 

Byoung Kweon KIM | Director | bkkim21kr@igt.or.kr

Young Joo JEONG | Economic Transformation Team | yjjeong@igt.or.kr

Minyoung KANG | Economic Transformation Team | mykang@igt.or.kr