At the end of 2016, China had about 77.4 gigawatts (GW) of solar photovoltaic capacity installed, more than any other country. According to China's National Energy Administration (NEA), it connected roughly 34 GW of new solar that year alone, close to doubling its total. Yet solar still supplied only around 1% of the country's electricity at the time, a reminder that being the biggest by capacity is not the same as running on sunshine.
This article explains what those 2016 numbers meant, why China pushed so hard into solar, what the record figures did not show, and how the build-out turned into one of the fastest energy transitions in history.
The 2016 milestone in numbers
- 77.42 GW installed by the end of 2016, according to the NEA, overtaking Germany as the world's largest solar fleet (China had already overtaken Germany around 2015, depending on the data source).
- About 34 GW added in 2016, much of it in the first half of the year as developers rushed to connect projects before a planned cut in feed-in tariffs.
- Around 1% of electricity came from solar, as reported by Engadget and others at the time. Non-fossil sources of all kinds, including hydro, wind and nuclear, made up roughly 11% of the mix by that measure.
- The provinces that added the most were reported as Shandong, Xinjiang and Henan, while the largest totals were in the sunny, open north-west, including Xinjiang, Gansu, Qinghai and Inner Mongolia.
Per person, China still lagged behind countries such as Germany, Japan and the United States in 2016. Its lead came from sheer scale.
Capacity is not the same as electricity produced
Many headlines in 2017 said China had become the "largest producer" of solar power. Strictly, the figure was about capacity: the maximum output panels can deliver under ideal sunlight. Generation is the electricity actually produced over a year, and it depends on sunshine hours, weather, panel condition and whether the grid can take the power.
That last point mattered a great deal. Many of China's biggest solar farms were built in remote western provinces with plenty of land and sun but few people and limited transmission lines to the industrial east. Grid operators often had to turn plants down or off, a problem known as curtailment. In some western regions in 2016, a sizeable share of potential solar output was wasted this way. Curtailment fell in later years as China built long-distance ultra-high-voltage power lines and changed grid rules, but it remains a point critics watch closely.
Why China went big on solar
Air pollution. China relied heavily on coal, which caused severe smog in many cities as well as soot, acid rain, ash and other waste. Coal mining and transport added their own damage to land and water. Cleaner power became a public-health priority as well as a climate one.
Energy security. Every panel installed reduces dependence on imported fuel and on volatile global energy prices.
Industrial strategy. China has been the world's largest maker of solar panels since around 2008, and Chinese companies came to dominate almost every stage of the supply chain, including about 80% of global polysilicon production. A huge home market helped those manufacturers grow and drove down costs worldwide.
Policy support. Feed-in tariffs, targets in the five-year plans and programmes such as "Top Runner", which rewarded high-efficiency projects, and poverty-alleviation solar schemes in rural areas all encouraged rapid installation.
In early 2017, Chinese officials also said the country would invest about 2.5 trillion yuan, widely reported as around $360 billion, in renewable power by 2020, and claimed the push would create more than 13 million jobs. Those were government projections reported by news agencies, not audited outcomes.
Targets that were quickly overtaken
In 2017, plans called for around 110 GW of solar by 2020. Reports differed on whether that meant total capacity or additions, but it made little difference: the real build-out blew past it. Wikipedia's data, drawing on Chinese and international sources, shows roughly:
- about 130 GW installed by the end of 2017;
- about 253 GW by the end of 2020;
- about 609 GW by the end of 2023;
- about 887 GW by the end of 2024, after adding roughly 277 GW in a single year;
- more than 1,000 GW (1 terawatt) by May 2025.
At the 2020 Climate Ambition Summit, President Xi Jinping set a goal of 1,200 GW of combined wind and solar capacity by 2030. That target was reached in 2024, six years early. Separately, China pledged to peak its carbon emissions before 2030 and reach carbon neutrality before 2060.
Solar's share of electricity has risen accordingly, though coal still provided the largest part of China's power in the mid-2020s. Rapid growth in electricity demand means renewables are partly meeting new demand rather than only replacing coal.
Other countries in the 2017 story
Coverage of China's 2016 milestone often mentioned other countries' moves away from fossil fuels. Two details need care.
Ireland did not stop using fossil fuels. In July 2018 its parliament passed the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act, which required the state's Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, worth about €8.9 billion, to sell its holdings in fossil fuel companies within five years. It was described at the time as a world first for a national investment fund, which is very different from a country ending fossil fuel use.
Iceland was exploring ultra-deep geothermal drilling, including the Iceland Deep Drilling Project, which aimed to tap extremely hot fluids several kilometres underground to produce far more power per well. Iceland already generated almost all of its electricity from hydro and geothermal sources.
In the United States, the 2017 debate focused on federal plans to support fossil fuel industries, while state policies and falling costs kept solar growing.
Key takeaways
- China's 77.42 GW in 2016 made it the world's largest solar market by capacity, but solar still produced only about 1% of its electricity then.
- Capacity, generation and grid access are different things; curtailment showed that panels alone do not guarantee clean power reaches users.
- Nuclear power is low-carbon but is not counted as renewable; hydro, wind and solar are.
- The 2016 numbers were only the beginning: by 2025 China's solar fleet had grown more than tenfold, past 1,000 GW.
Sources: PV Tech: China connected more than 34GW of solar in 2016; Engadget, 5 February 2017: China is now the biggest producer of solar power; Wikipedia: Solar power in China; IEA: Solar PV; originally reported via Reuters and Collective Evolution.
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