China is on track to almost double its wind and solar capacity by 2025 and blow past the country’s clean power target five years early, according to Global Energy Monitor.
The country has announced or begun construction on enough projects for total wind and solar capacity to likely reach 1,371 gigawatts by 2025, the climate research firm said in a new report. That would vastly outstrip a goal set by Chinese President Xi Jinping in late 2020 of having 1,200 gigawatts of panels and turbines by 2030.
China has installed record amounts of solar each of the past two years and is turbo-charging its efforts in 2023 as an easing of supply chain bottlenecks drives down the price of panels. Still, the country is mining record amounts of coal and building a new fleet of generators powered by the fossil fuel — and striking new long-term deals to buy natural gas — in order to avoid shortages that have plagued its electricity system in recent years.