China's Electricity Crisis Was Real. Wendover's Long-Term Verdict Needed More Than a Snapshot.
Wendover Productions identifies a genuine weakness in China's electricity system: a country investing heavily in renewable energy can still find itself dependent on coal when demand surges, fuel supplies tighten, and electricity markets fail to respond. But the episode turns the 2021 crisis into a much larger judgment about China's energy transition without adequately testing what happened next. By 2025, renewable generation was growing fast enough to reduce fossil-fuel generation, even as China continued approving and building enormous amounts of coal capacity. Both developments matter, and neither can be understood through the episode's original crisis narrative alone.
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The 2021 crisis was partly a government policy failure
Wendover correctly identifies the coal-price mechanism: generators were required to sell electricity at regulated prices while international coal prices surged, making generation financially unattractive. But it leaves out an important part of the crisis: China's existing dual-control policy, which imposed provincial targets for both total energy consumption and energy intensity.
In the first half of 2021, 12 provinces were failing their targets. Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu subsequently rationed electricity to help meet those requirements. The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies identified these administrative restrictions, coal shortages, strong industrial demand and pricing distortions as interacting causes of the crisis. Some factory shutdowns were therefore not simply evidence that China lacked generating capacity; they were also consequences of government-imposed energy restrictions.
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More damagingly, the video describes a pricing regime that had already been changed before publication. On October 15, 2021, China introduced reforms allowing coal-fired electricity prices to fluctuate by up to 20% around benchmark levels, removing that upper limit for high-energy-consuming businesses and pushing industrial and commercial consumers towards market-based electricity purchases. Wendover published its episode on November 3, 2022, more than a year later, without explaining this major response.
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The reform did not solve the problem. The International Energy Agency found that more than 90% of China's traded electricity was still tied to medium- and long-term contracts by 2023, restricting the ability to adjust supply and prices to changing conditions. That is the more important story: China changed its pricing rules but continued struggling to make electricity markets sufficiently flexible.
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The August 2022 crisis exposes another weakness the episode overlooks
Wendover published after China had experienced another major electricity shortage, this time in Sichuan.
In August 2022, extreme heat and drought forced Sichuan to shut down industrial electricity users. Peak electricity demand reached approximately 65 GW, more than 25% above the previous year's level, while drought severely reduced hydropower production. Sichuan normally obtains more than 80% of its electricity from hydropower.
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There was an especially revealing complication: Sichuan continued exporting electricity under existing contracts while local industries were being forced to close. The Lantau Group's August 23, 2022 analysis documented how contractual export commitments constrained the province's ability to redirect electricity towards its own shortage.
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This was not simply another coal shortage. It was a failure of flexibility in a hydropower-dependent province facing extreme weather and inflexible interprovincial arrangements.
The episode's concentration on the 2021 crisis misses an opportunity to distinguish two different failures: coal-dependent generation becoming uneconomic during a fuel-price shock, and renewable-heavy generation becoming unreliable locally when drought and rigid electricity contracts collide.
The 60% transmission statistic needs a proper examination
The episode describes China's ultra-high-voltage transmission lines as operating at approximately 60% of capacity. The underlying reporting deserves more qualification.
A March 2021 investigation by Caixin and Sixth Tone reported that many UHV lines were operating at slightly above 60% of their designed capacity. Its concrete example was the 2,383-kilometre Jiuquan-Hunan line, for which an anonymous Hunan electricity expert described utilisation at just over half its planned capacity. This is evidence of genuine underutilisation, but it is not a comprehensive national audit of every Chinese transmission line.
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There is also important evidence of what the network was accomplishing. The OECD recorded approximately 1,770 TWh of electricity transferred across Chinese provincial borders in 2022, equivalent to roughly one-fifth of national electricity consumption. The IEA separately reported that renewable sources accounted for 56.2% of electricity carried by new high-voltage lines in 2022, exceeding the national 50% requirement.
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These figures do not establish that the network was operating efficiently. They do establish that the infrastructure was already moving substantial quantities of electricity, including renewable power.
The more revealing problem is the institutional arrangement governing that infrastructure. Provincial governments retain considerable autonomy, cross-provincial transfers are frequently locked into long-term contracts, and electricity imported by one province can be treated as a firm supply commitment regardless of changing local conditions. The IEA identifies these arrangements as significant obstacles to flexible electricity distribution.
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And the problem persists. Reuters reported that in the first half of 2025, solar curtailment reached 6.6% and wind curtailment 5.7%, with much higher losses in renewable-rich regions such as Tibet.
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The distinction matters: China does not simply need more transmission lines. It needs infrastructure, storage, pricing and dispatch arrangements that allow electricity to move where it is actually needed, when it is needed.
Renewable growth has weakened the episode's economy-versus-climate argument
The most important subsequent development is that China's electricity demand has continued growing while renewable generation has begun displacing fossil-fuel generation.
Ember's 2026 Global Electricity Review reports that in 2025:
- Electricity demand increased by 503 TWh, or 5%.
- Clean electricity generation increased by 561 TWh, or 15%.
- Wind and solar alone added 474 TWh, covering 94% of additional electricity demand.
- Coal-fired generation fell by 71 TWh, or 1.2%.
This was the first annual decline in China's coal generation since 2015.
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One year does not establish a permanent emissions peak. China still generated approximately 5,757 TWh from coal in 2025, representing 54% of its electricity. But the figures challenge the episode's central economic framing: increasing electricity consumption does not inevitably require increasing coal generation.
There is, however, an important contradiction that makes the real story more interesting.
China commissioned approximately 78 GW of new coal-fired capacity in 2025, the highest annual addition in a decade. Another 291 GW remained in the project pipeline, while 161 GW of new or reactivated projects were proposed during the year. The CREA and Global Energy Monitor report also identifies a continued preference for very large generating units, including 52 units of at least 1 GW.
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Why build more coal plants while coal generation falls?
Part of the answer is the changing role of coal. The IEA reports that China had retrofitted approximately 300 GW of coal capacity for greater operational flexibility by 2023. Average coal-plant utilisation was around half of capacity, and Beijing introduced capacity payments in January 2024 to compensate generators for some fixed costs as their operating hours declined.
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China is attempting to turn coal plants into supporting capacity for a renewable-heavy electricity system. That is materially different from simply burning more coal to sustain economic growth.
But there is a serious risk: newly constructed, large coal plants designed for high utilisation can become expensive obstacles to decarbonisation if they are operated as conventional baseload generators.
The distinction between installed capacity and actual electricity generation is essential. Wendover's narrative does not adequately explore it.
Even the air-conditioning statistic loses an important distinction
The episode states that cooling buildings can consume approximately 50% of China's electricity on extremely hot days.
The underlying IEA research makes a more precise distinction. Cooling accounted for approximately 16% of China's peak electricity load in 2017, rising to as much as 50% of peak demand during extreme heat events. Annual cooling consumption was approximately 400 TWh in 2017.
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Peak demand is not the same thing as total electricity consumption. The distinction matters when explaining whether air conditioning creates a temporary grid-capacity problem or accounts for an enormous share of annual electricity use.
The underlying finding is important. The wording should have been more precise.
Political distrust is not a substitute for testing climate commitments
The video questions China's climate promises by invoking its commitments concerning Hong Kong, its account of Tiananmen Square and its position on Xinjiang.
Those are serious political and human-rights subjects. But they do not establish whether a particular emissions target will be achieved.
The episode makes a useful distinction between carbon intensity and absolute emissions: reducing emissions per unit of GDP does not necessarily mean reducing total emissions. That is the correct basis for examining China's climate commitments.
A subsequent development offers a more concrete test. In September 2025, China announced a 2035 target to reduce economy-wide net greenhouse-gas emissions by 7–10% from peak levels, alongside a target of 3,600 GW of installed wind and solar capacity.
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The Climate Action Tracker's December 2025 assessment identifies a fundamental accountability problem: the emissions target uses an unclear peak baseline and remains highly insufficient against a 1.5°C-compatible pathway.
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That is a defensible criticism. It examines the actual target, its baseline and its climate implications rather than assuming that unrelated political controversies establish whether every future commitment will be honoured.
Verdict: The real problem is the electricity system, not simply China's appetite for growth
Wendover gets several important things right. China's coal dependence is enormous, its provincial electricity markets remain fragmented, its transmission infrastructure has struggled to keep pace with renewable development, and extreme weather creates serious reliability risks.
But the episode's explanation is incomplete. It overlooks the administrative restrictions that contributed to the 2021 crisis, fails to account for electricity-market reforms already introduced before publication, and does not examine the second major shortage in Sichuan in 2022. Its later economic-versus-climate conclusion also fails to distinguish coal capacity from coal generation.
The evidence points to a more consequential problem: China has demonstrated that it can expand renewable generation fast enough to meet growing electricity demand, but it has not yet completed the institutional and infrastructure reforms needed to make that transition reliable and sustainable.
China does not simply need to choose between economic growth and climate action. It needs to stop allowing an inflexible electricity system, provincial interests and coal investment incentives to undermine the renewable capacity it is already building.
That is a stronger indictment than the one Wendover delivers.
References
1. China's Electricity Problem — Wendover Productions, YouTube, November 3, 2022. Original work under review; discloses HelloFresh sponsorship, with no established connection between the sponsor and China's energy sector.
2. China's Power Crisis: Long-term Goals Meet Short-term Realities, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, November 2021. Explains the interaction between coal prices, provincial energy targets and government pricing distortions.
3. China Lifts Curbs on Coal-Fired Electricity Prices Amid Power Crunch, Caixin Global, October 13, 2021. Documents the electricity-price reforms that took effect before the Wendover episode was published.
4. When the Water Runs Out: China's Latest Power Crunch, The Lantau Group, August 23, 2022. Provides detailed evidence of Sichuan's hydropower shortage, industrial shutdowns and continuing electricity exports.
5. Untangling the Crossed Wires of China's Super Grid, Sixth Tone, March 9, 2021. Examines the underutilisation of UHV lines and the specific Jiuquan-Hunan transmission problem.
6. Building a Unified National Power Market System in China, OECD, April 2023. Quantifies interprovincial electricity transfers and explains the institutional barriers to a unified national market.
7. The Future of Cooling in China, International Energy Agency, June 20, 2019. Establishes the distinction between annual cooling consumption and cooling's contribution to peak electricity demand.
8. Meeting Power System Flexibility Needs in China by 2030, International Energy Agency, November 13, 2024. Examines electricity-market reforms, coal retrofits, interprovincial contracts, storage and renewable integration.
9. As China's Renewable Capacity Soars, Utilisation Lags, Data Show, Reuters, August 5, 2025. Provides evidence that renewable curtailment remains a serious grid-integration problem.
10. Global Electricity Review 2026 — Major Countries and Regions, Ember, 2026. Supplies 2025 electricity-demand, renewable-generation and coal-generation figures for China.
11. Built to Peak: Coal Power Expansion Runs Out of Room in China, Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and Global Energy Monitor, February 2026. Documents new coal capacity, proposed projects and the growing mismatch between coal investment and actual generation requirements.
12. China's 2035 Nationally Determined Contributions, Chinese Government / Xinhua, September 25, 2025. Records China's updated emissions and renewable-capacity commitments.
13. China: 2035 NDC Assessment, Climate Action Tracker, December 2025. Evaluates the credibility, baseline and climate adequacy of China's latest emissions commitment.