China plans to set up a uniform power market by 2030 and launch a national power exchange 'when the time is ripe', moves that are key to the large-scale adoption of renewables and the decarbonization of the world's largest power sector.

The country's top economic planner National Development and Reform Commission, or NDRC, and the National Energy Administration end-January published "guidelines for accelerating the development of a uniform national power market mechanism."

The NDRC provided a roadmap to establish a power market with electricity flowing across an integrated national power grid. It officially proposed the creation of a national power exchange for the first time.

The guidance tackles bottlenecks that hinder China's cross-regional power trading, critical for boosting renewables' utilization rates. The country's existing fossil fuels-based power grids lack the capability to manage intermittency and are unable to respond to real-time changes in electricity demand and supply.

Guest post from S&P Global Platts