Impact Mechanism of Green Electricity Consumption on China’s Coal Power Industry Chain Resilience

This study constructs a resilience assessment framework for China’s coal power industry chain from three dimensions—resistance, recovery, and greenness—using provincial panel data from 30 provinces over the period 2015–2022 (240 observations). It empirically examines the nonlinear impact of green electricity consumption on coal power industry chain resilience and explores the underlying mechanisms. The results show that: (1) the resilience of China’s coal power industry chain exhibits a fluctuating upward trend with significant regional disparities, with the central region showing the highest average resilience level; (2) green electricity consumption has a statistically significant inverted U-shaped effect on coal power industry chain resilience, with an estimated turning point at approximately 0.633, indicating that green expansion enhances resilience below this threshold but weakens it beyond this level; (3) mediation analysis reveals that in the early stage, green electricity consumption improves resilience by increasing power source diversity, while excessive expansion reduces resilience by lowering coal-fired power utilization hours; and (4) heterogeneity analysis indicates that the inverted U-shaped relationship is significant in the central and western regions but not in the eastern and northeastern regions. These findings suggest that green electricity consumption should be coordinated with coal power adjustment capacity to ensure a resilient energy transition.