Will China’s energy crisis dampen its effort to cut emissions?

Liu Rui, a university student in Tonghua, a city in Jilin province, felt anxious. A sudden, widespread power outage across northeastern China had left her family without electricity to cook or heat water, and her laptop’s battery was running out before an online class.

“I was always worried the internet would suddenly disconnect during class,” says Ms. Liu by email, using a pseudonym to protect her privacy. She describes her neighborhood’s darkened streets and shops, and feeling like a thief going through a dimmed supermarket looking for frozen steamed buns – only to find no buns and the freezer shut off.

Thousands of miles south in China’s Guangdong province, factory owner Zhang Hong faced a similar dilemma. Her printed circuit-board factory, part of China’s vast