Powering forward

China's leadership in renewable energy is fueling the global green transition

Official data showed that the total renewable energy generating capacity in China had reached 1,002 gigawatts by the end of October 2021, passing the milestone of 1,000 GW. This is a critical milestone for the green energy transition in China, and good news for the global energy transition.

Renewables now account for 43.5 percent of China's total generation capacity, up by 10.2 percentage points from 2015. Among the renewables, the capacity of hydropower (including pumped-storage), wind, solar and biomass is 385 GW, 299 GW, 282 GW and 35.34 GW, respectively, by the end of October 2021, all of which rank the first in the world.

Actually, China has been the leader in hydropower development since 2004 and in wind and solar power since 2012.

Looking back to the end of 2005, when China passed its Renewable Energy Law, wind and solar power capacity was just 1,060 MW. Afterward, in just 15 years, the total capacity of wind and solar power skyrocketed to 590 GW.

Both benefited from the Renewable Energy Law, the ambitious development planning for renewables, the facilitating of feed-in tariffs and effective rollout.

Observed from the perspective of meeting the needs of electricity consumption growth, the contribution of wind and solar power is also on the rise, from 2.7 percent during 2006-10 to 11.7 percent during 2011-15, then to 27 percent during 2016-20. These figures highlight the government's determination to advance the energy transition and actively cope with climate change.

The development of China's renewable energy industry has been an eye-catching process that started from scratch, first as a follower, then gradually moving forward as a parallel runner and then striding forward as a frontrunner. Since 2017, China has been the leading manufacturer of renewable energy technologies, and it has formed the most complete renewable industry chains and supply chains in the world, and it is now striving to become a key global renewable technology innovation hub.

Seven Chinese companies are among the global top 10 wind turbine manufacturers, six among the global top 10 solar photovoltaic manufacturers and seven among the global top 10 battery manufacturers.

But although China has made great achievements in developing its renewable energy industry, the share of renewables in primary energy consumption is still low. In 2020, non-fossil energy accounted for 15.9 percent of the country's energy consumption, and excluding nuclear power, the share of renewable is 13.7 percent. And rather than looking at the great progress China is making in its green energy transition, international observers still tend to focus on its coal use data.

In 2020, the added annual capacity of wind and solar PV in China was 119 GW, approximating an annual electricity generation of 190 terawatthours, which accounted for only 1.1 percent of China's primary energy consumption. In the same year, China's primary energy consumption was 4,980 million metric tons of coal equivalent. But is the figure of 119 GW a small one? Let's look at two pioneering nations in the global energy transition. For Germany, the total renewable capacity was 131.74 GW by the end of 2020, while for the United Kingdom the figure was 48 GW.

As the most populous developing country and the world's factory, China has an immense energy demand, which renders the rise of the share of renewable in primary energy consumption a challenging process. However, policymakers have already delineated a definitive ending for this process with the commitment to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and reach carbon neutrality before 2060.

The gradual implementation of the means to realize China's carbon neutrality target will open infinite space for renewable energy development. According to the top-level design, non-fossil energy will account for at least 80 percent of China's energy consumption by 2060, among which, a small portion will come from nuclear power while the majority will be from renewable sources.

The implication is that the deployment of renewable is accelerating in China. It is expected that during the 2021-25 period, the annual addition of wind and solar will reach 120 GW, then 140 GW during 2026-30, and 160 GW during 2031-35. With these, we can expect that the second 1,000 GW from renewables will happen by 2028.

In becoming the center of global renewable manufacturing, innovation and industry services, China is also playing a big role in facilitating the global energy transition.

China's powerful manufacturing capability is a key factor behind the rapidly falling costs of renewables worldwide. In the future China's innovation capability will further fuel improvement of the renewable energy sector. China is the leading global renewable equipment exporter and is directly driving the rapid renewable deployment globally. China accounts for 28 percent of global solar panel exports and 13 percent of global wind turbine exports. Renewable energy also plays an important role in China's foreign power projects. According to data from the Global Development Policy Center at Boston University, during 2000 to 2021, hydropower, wind and PV projects accounted for 36.6 percent of Chinese overseas power investment.

In recent years, China has formulated stricter green outbound investment guidelines and the Belt and Road Initiative green project development guide. President Xi Jinping announced at the United Nations General Assembly in September that China will stop building coal-fired power plants overseas. With these encouraging changes, the priority for China's overseas power projects has already shifted to renewable energy. In 2020, renewable projects exceeded more than 50 percent of the total. We are quite confident that the experience and lessons that China has learned in renewable manufacturing, technology innovation, market deployment and system integration can be replicable best practices for developing countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative as they build their power infrastructure.

The author is a professor at the School of Economics and Management at North China Electric Power University and deputy director of the Beijing Key Laboratory of New Energy and Low-carbon Development. The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.