How can China's northeast overcome its renewable challenges?

China’s northeast region has been struggling from a slowdown in its economy, a shrinking population and a decline in consumption. Similarly, the power sector has not been immune from this crisis. Suffering from weak demand, excess capacity and an unbalanced power mix, the Northeast faces extremely high renewable curtailment. To better understand the power industry in this region, Wood Mackenzie recently travelled to Jilin, where we visited the State Grid company and several independent power producers. The challenges Jilin has faced are a good representation of renewables development in China as a whole, with many provinces coming up against similar hurdles. Through learning Jilin’s lessons, we hope to shed some light on the region’s future energy layout and rationalisation, and on the implications for China.