China: The Status of Solar and Wind Energy

Vincent Mao

Despite the breakneck expansion of green infrastructure, the current balance of power still tilts toward traditional sources. Fossil fuels remain China’s primary energy backbone.

In 2025, China’s power sector achieved a historic milestone, cementing its position at the forefront of the global energy transition. Wind and solar energy generated 22% of the nation’s total electricity, easily outpacing the global average of 17%. Over the course of the year, the country added a staggering 315 gigawatts (GW) of new solar capacity and 119 GW of new wind capacity to its grid, with solar generation alone hitting 336 terawatt-hours (TWh)—a 40% year-on-year increase.

This massive build-out was initially fueled by aggressive government targets and a rush to capitalize on a favorable fixed-price tariff system before it expired in June 2025. Today, however, the market is experiencing a sharp cool-down as policy shifts take effect.

Early 2026 data shows that solar installations fell 56% year-on-year in March and plummeted by 79% in April. Looking ahead, the growth trajectory remains ambitious but more controlled: the central government has set a target of 200 GW of combined new solar and wind capacity for 2026. Further out, the newly adopted 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) targets 100 GW of offshore wind by 2030 and mandates that non-fossil sources supply 25% of the overall energy mix.

The primary barrier to this continued expansion is structural. The sheer volume of incoming renewable capacity has severely outpaced grid integration capabilities, leading to elevated rates of “curtailment”—where generated power is simply wasted because the grid cannot accommodate it.

In early 2026, curtailment rates surged to 9.2% for solar and 8.5% for wind. This bottleneck is worsened by rigid provincial electricity trading structures and legacy coal and gas plants bound by inflexible long-term contracts. To solve this, policymakers are actively transitioning the market toward competitive pricing. Crucially, the 15th Five-Year Plan allocates US$550 billion specifically for grid modernization to expand ultra-high-voltage transmission networks that move clean power from resource-rich western provinces to high-demand eastern coastal cities.

While China consumes the vast majority of its domestically generated clean electricity, it stands unchallenged as the dominant global exporter of renewable technology. Amid intense demand across Europe, Asia, and Africa, Chinese solar cell exports soared to nearly 1.2 million tonnes in April 2026, reflecting a 60% year-on-year increase and insulating manufacturers from the domestic installation slowdown.

Domestically, this influx of wind and solar power is fundamentally rebasing China’s industrial economy by driving the widespread electrification of buildings, manufacturing, and transport. As evidence of this structural shift, New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) accounted for 51% of all domestic auto production by April 2026. Furthermore, renewables are increasingly targeted to power the explosive AI data center sector. Beijing aims to run these data centers primarily on green energy by 2030, though grid operators currently remain resistant due to baseline reliability concerns.

Despite the breakneck expansion of green infrastructure, the current balance of power still tilts toward traditional sources. Fossil fuels remain China’s primary energy backbone. In 2025, fossil fuel generation accounted for 58% of China’s electricity, down from 62% in 2024. Significantly, 2025 saw the first absolute decline in coal generation (71 TWh) since 2015. However, the realities of early 2026 highlighted the ongoing friction in this transition: inflexible grid management forced operators to burn more coal and gas to meet demand while simultaneously curtailing renewable output. It is a stark reminder that while China leads the world in renewable deployment, optimizing the grid to run on it remains the country’s next great industrial challenge.

This Post was submitted by Climate Scorecard China Country Manager, Vincent Mao.

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