The Chinese State Council has released its CO₂ peak emissions action plan, setting a direct target for nuclear energy: 110 GW of operational capacity by 2030. At the end of 2024, China stood at 62.5 GW. The required leap — nearly 50 GW in five years — is substantial, but consistent with the pace of reactor approvals seen in recent years.
The document, covering the 2026–2030 period and titled “Carbon Peak Action Plan for the 15th Five-Year Plan,” also sets targets for other clean energy sources. Wind and solar must exceed 2,800 GW of installed capacity, while conventional hydropower aims for around 410 GW. Nuclear sits within this framework as a baseload source — stable, dispatchable, zero-emission — with a role the plan explicitly defines as “replacing high-carbon sources.” The overarching goal is to bring non-fossil fuels to 25% of total energy consumption and 50% of electricity generation by 2030. In 2025, non-fossil sources accounted for 21.7% of energy consumption.
This plan does not emerge in isolation. The 15th Five-Year Plan, approved in March 2026, had already incorporated the 110 GW nuclear target. That same month, China signed the Paris declaration to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050. The State Council has been approving new reactors at a rate of at least ten units per year since 2022 — in 2025, it greenlit ten new plants, including the third phase of the Sanmen nuclear power station in Zhejiang province, representing a combined investment of over 200 billion yuan. Construction is focused on Hualong One and CAP1000 technologies, third-generation reactors with mature, standardized supply chains. That standardization matters: it drives down both construction time and cost, with Chinese projects typically completed in around five years at approximately $2.7 billion per unit.
The plan also addresses the energy demands of artificial intelligence. New computing infrastructure will be required to source power predominantly from non-fossil fuels, with coordinated spatial planning between data centers and clean energy sources. This is a detail worth noting: the explosive growth of the AI sector is reshaping electricity consumption forecasts, and nuclear — given its continuous output — is the most direct answer to the demand for guaranteed baseload power that solar and wind alone cannot provide.
Reaching 110 GW by 2030 will require adding roughly 48 GW of capacity in four years. As of late August 2025, China had 112 nuclear units in operation, under construction, or approved, with a combined capacity of 125 GW — suggesting that the existing pipeline may already be sufficient, provided commissioning schedules hold. If China’s construction machine maintains its current pace, 2030 could see it consolidate its position as the world’s leading country in operational nuclear capacity, with tangible implications for the global reactor technology market and for the export ambitions tied to the Belt and Road Initiative.
