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Paper short abstract

This study explores how China's electricity market reforms redefine energy transition as a problem of system flexibility and market coordination at this stage. It shows how expert knowledge drives material infrastructures' demand such as storage, grid expansion, and ancillary services.

Paper long abstract

In mainstream narratives, energy transition is often understood as a process driven primarily by the expansion of renewable energy technologies. The resulting challenges of renewable integration require extensive material infrastructures to support the operation of the electricity system. However, existing research pays limited attention to how energy transition is initially defined and organized through expert knowledge frameworks.

Taking China as a case, this paper explores how electricity market reform has emerged as a key policy pathway to address renewable integration and system flexibility challenges in the current stage of development. Drawing on economic and policy expertise, market reform introduces price signals and trading mechanisms that reshape the governance of electricity systems. These mechanisms have promoted the development of ancillary service markets and further influenced the construction of key infrastructures such as energy storage and grid networks.

This paper argues that market design should not be understood merely as an institutional arrangement. It represents a form of expert knowledge practice that defines system problems and proposes particular solutions. In doing so, it reshapes the infrastructure demands and material pathways of energy transition. By analysing this process, the study provides a new perspective on the relationship between the politics of knowledge and infrastructure development in energy transitions.