How China Became the World’s Leader on Renewable Energy. China has achieved stunning growth in its installed renewable capacity over the last two decades, far outpacing the rest of the world. But to end its continued dependence on fossil fuels, it must now move ahead with planned reforms to its national electricity system. eYale.edu Isabel Hilton • March 13, 2024 Last November, Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua and U.S. climate envoy John Kerry shook hands on a pledge to triple renewable energy globally by 2030. It was hailed as a welcome revival of climate cooperation between the world’s biggest and second-biggest emitters of greenhouse gases and offered hope that the two veteran climate negotiators had found a way through a blizzard of negative diplomatic exchanges to keep alive the prospects for greater global ambition on tackling climate change. In one key sector essential to that ambition, however, the Chinese government can argue, with some justification, that it is China, not the United States, that is in the lead. In a world in which national climate targets are being missed, the speed and scale of expansion in China’s installed renewable capacity is unmatched. In 2020, for example, China pledged to reach 1,200 gigawatts of renewables capacity by 2030, more than double its capacity at that time. At its present pace, it will meet that target by 2025, and could boast as much as 1,000 gigawatts of solar power alone by the end of 2026, an achievement that would make a substantial contribution to the 11,000 gigawatts of installed renewable capacity that the world needs to meet the 2030 targets of the Paris Agreement. Fossil fuels now make up less than half of China’s total installed generation capacity, a dramatic reduction from a decade ago when fossil fuels accounted for two-thirds of its power capacity.
 
In 2022, China installed roughly as much solar capacity as the rest of the world combined, then doubled additional solar in 2023. When the International Energy Authority issued its assessment of the pledge to triple renewables globally by 2030, it pointed out that the 50 percent increase in global renewable installations in 2023 was largely driven by China. In 2022, China installed roughly as much solar photovoltaic capacity as the rest of the world combined, then went on in 2023 to double new solar installations, increase new wind capacity by 66 percent, and almost quadruple additions of energy storage. For the past two decades, China has been notorious as the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, a country that also uses as much heavily polluting coal as the rest of the world combined. How did it also become the world’s renewable powerhouse? Part of the answer goes back to investment decisions made in the mid-2000s when China’s decades-long phase of rapid GDP growth was coming to an end. Labor costs were rising, and China’s development model, with its overwhelming dependence on coal, had plunged China into multiple crises of air, soil, and water pollution. In the first decade of this century, China’s emissions more than doubled, and by 2006 it had overtaken the U.S. to earn the unwelcome title of the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases by volume.China’s leadership was alert to the negative diplomatic impacts of being the world’s worst polluter, especially in those countries most vulnerable to climate impacts. At the same time, China’s own exposure to climate change effects, on top of its escalating pollution crisis and the public unrest it was generating, was becoming a significant topic in Beijing’s top-level policy discussions. China’s planners were looking for investments that would create an opportunity for a more advanced technological future, and this coincided with the need to clean up China’s environment and the global effort to cut emissions. All this pointed to supporting the development of the renewable technologies the world would need if it was to avoid climate catastrophe.
In the next and every subsequent five-year plan, China made strategic investments in all aspects of renewable technologies, from solar and wind capacity, green hydrogen, and geothermal projects to research and investment in battery storage and its supply chains. In the first phase of its rapid industrial development starting in the 1990s, China had been obliged to license technologies owned by others. Now the strategic ambition was to dominate the field, positioning China as the global supplier of goods to an increasingly carbon-constrained world.  Within a decade, China had largely achieved its goal of dominating not only the production of solar and wind technologies, but it had developed a near monopoly on every aspect of the supply chains, including the mining and processing of the rare-earths and strategic minerals essential for the clean energy revolution. Today, China has more than 80 percent of the world’s solar manufacturing capacity. The extraordinary scale of China’s renewables sector output has driven down prices worldwide, and this is a key factor in reducing the cost barrier to renewable systems for poorer countries. Today China not only holds important positions in wind and battery technologies, but a Chinese company, BYD, has become the world’s biggest EV manufacturer, and China is poised to pose a formidable global challenge in all aspects of electric transportation to established vehicle brands. Today the renewables sector is one of the relatively few bright spots in the Chinese economy, having benefited from a surge in government stimulus as Beijing tried to restore growth hit hard by Covid-19. 
 
The massive real estate market, which boosted China’s GDP figures for more than three decades, is teetering on the edge of collapse. The pandemic and the downturn in global economies that followed has hit China’s exports, and nervous Chinese consumers are sitting on their wallets in case things get worse. Renewable energy, however, seems to have a bright future, but fully realizing that potential will demand further radical reforms. Renewables now account for half of China’s installed capacity, but there has also been a surge in permits for new coal-fired power plants, and China still generates about 70 percent of its electricity from fossil fuels. This means actual renewable energy use is lagging behind installed capacity......read on         https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-renewable-energy