China’s energy industry has passed a new milestone, with the expansion of the Yangtze River Delta’s Beilun Power Station making it the largest thermal power station in the country by installed capacity.

The plant’s one gigawatt coal-fired Unit Nine has commenced operation after a 168-hour full-load trial, state-owned China Energy Investment Corporation announced on Monday.

That raised the total installed capacity of the power station, in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, to 7.34GW – surpassing the 6.72GW of the Tuoketuo Power Station in Hohhot, in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

While China has rapidly developed its wind and solar power capacity in recent years to meet peak carbon and carbon neutrality goals, thermal power remains a critical stabilising force in the meantime.

Coal accounted for 53.2 per cent of China’s total energy consumption last year, a decrease of 1.6 percentage points from 2023, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics. Clean energy – including natural gas, hydro, nuclear, wind and solar power – accounted for 28.6 per cent of total consumption, up by 2.2 percentage points.