Companies developing new renewables facilities in China today typically have a choice between selling power into China’s embryonic wholesale markets, or taking a twenty-year contract that, in place of the specific renewables tariff previously available, pays a fixed price pegged to the regulated provincial benchmark (that is, coal) tariff.46 ‘In most provinces,’ the IEA remarked in late 2021, ‘utility-scale onshore wind and solar PV projects can achieve reasonable returns with a twenty-year fixed price contract at provincial coal prices.’
