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China’s additions of wind and solar capacity once again exceeded forecasts and prior records in 2024, new data releases show.
Another 277GW of solar was installed through the year, 28% more than was added in 2023, according to the National Energy Administration. That brings the country’s total operational solar capacity to 887GW. Wind installations also hit a fresh record of 79GW — a 5% increase from the previous year — taking total capacity to 521GW.
That means China now has 1,408GW of wind and solar capacity — well ahead of the government’s prior target of having 1,200GW in place by 2030.
Meanwhile, nuclear reactor startups rose to 4GW in 2024, the largest annual increase since 2019.
Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), said nuclear additions will ramp up going forward since 55GW of new capacity is currently under construction.
“The combination of accelerating clean energy growth and moderating power demand growth promises to bend China’s emissions down further from the current plateau,” Myllyvirta said in a post.
That’s despite coal- and gas-fired power capacity additions of 54GW in 2024, a slight decline from the prior year.
Myllyvirta said energy capacity additions tend to accelerate towards the end of each year, which means last year’s new installations will only fully show up in generation statistics from 2025.
“So the record additions in the end of 2024 are highly relevant for the 2025 emission trend,” Myllyvirta said.
Close to half of the experts surveyed by CREA last year said China’s carbon dioxide emissions had probably already peaked, or would do so in 2025, thanks in large part to its unprecedented wind and solar boom.
However, it’s still too soon to call the top. China’s fossil fuel power plants generated 1.5% more electricity in 2024 than the previous year, per the National Bureau of Statistics. This indicates that electricity consumption continued to grow faster than clean energy output.
Meanwhile, 11 million electric vehicles were sold in China in 2024, a 40% increase, according to a tally by research group Rho Motion. One in two new cars sold in the country now has a plug, meaning China is expected to see a steady decline in gasoline demand in the years ahead. The country’s crude oil imports fell 1.9% in 2024, the first annual decline in two decades, barring the Covid-induced slump.
China’s rapid progress in electrifying transport, heavy industry, and heating will help turn the tide on emissions. The eastern province of Zhejiang has reached a world-leading electrification rate of 51%, according to an analysis by US-based research group RMI.
