Environmental stringency policies and education are becoming fundamental policy instruments for clean energy consumption but no study has been done to explore their impacts on clean energy consumption especially in China. The study addresses this gap by assessing the asymmetries of these two instruments in clean energy consumption for the period 1993 to 2019 by applying the NARDL approach. Further, we also explore the role of environmental law and education in clean energy consumption. Electric power consumption is used to measure the clean energy consumption effect, however, nuclear and renewables consumption is also used for checking the robustness of the findings. We found that positive change in environmental policy stringency leads to an upsurge in electric power consumption and nuclear and renewable energy consumption, while, negative change in environmental policy stringency has also a positive impact on electric power consumption and nuclear and renewable energy consumption in the long-run. Education and environmental law have a positive impact on electric power consumption; however, it does not affect nuclear and renewable energy consumption in the long-run. The findings suggest that environmental policy stringency, environmental law, education are effective policy measures for clean energy consumption in China.