Last year China met 84% of its electricity demand with wind and solar

[Ron Baiman]

Dear Colleagues,

This 9/10/2025 NYTime article grabbed my  attention: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/climate/china-clean-energy-fossil-fuel-research.html?unlocked_article_code=1.lE8.xRA5.5IiZhxTR80xS&smid=url-share

I think the source report (that I haven't read) is this: https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-review-2025/

A few other good snippets from the article: 

" According to Ember’s report, the falling costs of energy produced by Chinese-made wind and solar installations have allowed countries like Mexico, Bangladesh and Malaysia to race past the United States in recent years in terms of using renewably produced electricity (rather than fossil fuels) in everyday activities like heating and cooling buildings or powering vehicles."

And:

" To be sure, some countries would not be keen to rely so heavily on Chinese technology for geopolitical reasons. And few developing countries have the spending capacity to install the kinds of energy transmission and storage capacity that has allowed China to transform its own domestic energy grid so quickly."

Which is why national and global grids - of necessity requiring large scale public funding. My guess is - per my earlier Brett Chritopher The Price is Wrong - inspired posts on this -  the "marketization" of electrical transmission in the US - esp. spot price bidding schemes - remember Enron and CA? - have it made it much harder to drive this transition in the US.  It required large scale New Deal rural electrification subsidies to get electricity off the ground as a profitable universal technology in the US to begin with: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-the-new-deal-changed-american-power-w-sandeep-vaheesan/id1469270123?i=1000684633138

So this is good news for the world and highlights - as if this was further needed! - how stupid and retrograde the Trump/Rep US policies are!  

Unfortunately we're still a long way from net-zero emissions so cooling will still very much be needed to stave off disaster in the next few decades (at the very least). 

China has finally been able to cut emissions. But even with all this just barely: "The new analysis for Carbon Brief shows that China’s emissions were down 1.6% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025 and by 1% in the latest 12 months."  See:  https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-clean-energy-just-put-chinas-co2-emissions-into-reverse-for-first-time/#:~:text=For%20the%20first%20time%2C%20the%20growth%20in,by%201%25%20in%20the%20latest%2012%20months.

Best,

Ron

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[Michael Routh]

Hi Ron,

A useful article…thanks Ron. This won’t solve our immediate cooling needs but points out efforts China is making toward the energy transition.

Reading both the NYT article and relevant sections of the Ember report, I had a few takeaways that might be informative.

The NYT article actually states “…met 84% of its electricity demand growth with wind and solar…”.  Not demand, but demand growth.  However, I did not find this stated in the linked Ember report.  Notably, total demand in China is still mostly fossil fuel based. 

What the Ember report did state is “clean generation met 81% of the 2024 demand increase in China”.  “Clean generation” from the report also includes hydro and nuclear.  Extracting those, solar and wind appears to have provided about 57% of the 2024 demand growth, not 84%.

From the same report, 2024 US electricity demand growth provided by wind and solar appears to have been 75%.

While the Ember report suggests that the US met 2024 electricity demand growth with a greater %age of wind and solar than China, the trend is likely to change in 2025+ with US policy.

A few other takeaways. China’s 2024 electricity demand grew at 5x the US pace with 4x the population.  China added more solar and wind power than ROW combined.  China is firmly committed and investing to preserve its position as the dominant global provider of solar and wind technologies. This report and others suggest this commitment is economically driven…the clean energy sector contributed 10% of China’s 2024 GDP.

Regards,

Michael Routh

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 10, 2025, at 9:14 PM, Ron Baiman <rpba...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[oswald....@hispeed.ch]

Hi Michael, Ron,

 

if China meets 84% of its demand growth with renewables, it is no good news for the climate, because the remaining 16% are still met with fossil fuels (in China mainly coal), so there is more CO2 being emitted than before.

 

We need to shift our attention to emissions in absolute numbers. The size of our globe/the atmosphere is constant, and we keep adding GHG to it.

 

Energy transition is good - but it alone does not help, we need to remove GHG from the atmosphere.  

 

Regards

 

Oswald

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[Ron Baiman]

Thanks for these very important corrections to the language of the article Michael!

Agree with your other conclusions as well!

Best,

Ron 

[Ron Baiman]

Dear Colleagues,

It's been pointed out to me that the article does say "demand growth" not "demand" so the error is mine!

Best,

Ron

[Robin Collins]

I'm not sure that number is correct. Did they leap that far ahead in one year?  I think Michael has it right: growth, not demand. 

"In 2023, China's total installed electric generation capacity was 2.92 TW,^[4] of which 1.26 TW was renewable, including 376 GW from wind power and 425 GW from solar power.^[3] As of 2023, the total power generation capacity for renewable energy sources in China is at 53.9%.^[5] The rest was mostly coal capacity, with 1040 GW in 2019.^[6] Nuclear also plays an increasing role in the national electricity sector. As of February 2023, China has 55 nuclear plants with 57 GW of power in operation, 22 under construction with 24 GW and more than 70 planned with 88 GW. About 5% of electricity in the country comes from nuclear energy.^[7]"

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[Ron Baiman]

Yes Robin. You are correct (see prior posts - including mine - in the thread).

Best,

Ron