China’s Solar and Wind Capacity Surpasses That of Mostly Coal-Based Thermal Energy for the First Time

More than 60,000 solar photovoltaic panels installed on a mountain in Jinhua, Zhejiang province, China on April 11, 2025. CFOTO / Future Publishing via Getty Images

China’s National Energy Administration has announced that the country’s solar and wind energy capacity has exceeded that of thermal energy — which is mostly coal-powered — for the first time.

The largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, China has pledged to achieve peak carbon emissions by the end of the decade and become carbon neutral by 2060, reported AFP.

“In the first quarter of 2025, China’s newly installed wind and photovoltaic power capacity totalled 74.33 million kilowatts, bringing the cumulative installed capacity to 1.482 billion kilowatts,” the country’s energy body said.

That surpassed the 1.451 billion kilowatts of installed thermal power capacity for the first time.

“As new installations continue to grow rapidly, wind and solar capacity will maintain the lead over thermal power, the National Energy Administration said,” according to a press release from the State Council. “In the first quarter of this year, electricity generated from wind and photovoltaics reached 536.4 billion kilowatt-hours, accounting for 22.5 percent of China’s total power use, up 4.3 percentage points from the same period last year.”

Coal still supplies more than half of China’s energy — roughly 60 percent — but the country has been growing its renewable energy output in recent years, building nearly twice as much solar and wind capacity as the rest of the world combined, according to research from 2024, as AFP reported.

Global energy think tank Ember said China is on track for a minimum of 2,461 gigawatts of installed renewable energy capacity by 2030, doubling that of 2022, with almost triple the solar capacity.

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“The biggest shift in China’s electricity generation in 2024 was the continued explosive growth of solar. China contributed more than half of the global increase in both solar and wind generation. China is the world’s largest electricity consumer, in 2024 accounting for a third of global power demand, and clean generation met more than 80% of its demand growth,” Ember said.

President Xi Jinping earlier this week said that “no matter how the international situation changes,” China’s efforts to fight climate change “will not slow down,” reported AFP.

Xi said the country would announce its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) for 2035 — commitments for reducing greenhouse gas emissions — ahead of the United Nations COP30 Climate Conference in November, and that the NDCs would address all greenhouse gases, not only carbon dioxide.

China added 357 gigawatts of solar and wind last year, a new record that was 10 times the additions of the U.S.

China also achieved its target of installing 1,200 gigawatts of wind and solar capacity by 2030 nearly six years ahead of schedule.

The National Energy Administration’s announcement on Friday said that additions of solar and wind in the first quarter of this year had “far exceeded” the total increase in the country’s electricity consumption.

“This trend is very likely to continue in the following months and quarters in 2025,” Yao Zhe, Greenpeace East Asia’s global policy adviser, told AFP.

That suggests the country’s power sector is experiencing “structural change and the sector’s carbon emissions are one small step away from peaking,” Zhe said.

However, China’s energy consumption grew 4.3 percent in 2024.

David Fishman, senior manager at Hong Kong consultancy the Lantau Group, said covering the growth with renewables is a “tough proposition for a developing country with a huge heavy industrial segment and a residential population that frankly doesn’t even use that much electricity on a per capita basis,” as AFP reported.

China started construction on 94.5 additional gigawatts of coal energy projects in 2024, according to a February 2025 report from Global Energy Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

Coal production in the country has experienced a steady increase, from 3.9 billion tons five years ago to 4.8 billion tons last year.

Xi has pledged to “strictly control” coal power before “phasing it down” from 2026 to 2030.

“The country’s new energy industry has experienced rapid growth in recent years as it steps up efforts to decarbonize the economy,” the State Council said. “Since 2013, the country’s wind power installed capacity has grown sixfold, while solar power installed capacity has surged more than 180 times. Its annual new installations account for more than 40 percent of the global total, significantly contributing to [the] world’s green development.”

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