China has committed to doubling its clean energy supply within the next decade, with a substantial expansion milestone set for 2030. A senior official at the National Development and Reform Commission delivered the announcement on April 17. The statement added long-awaited specificity to a target embedded in the country’s latest five-year plan, which had left the precise definition of what was to be doubled unresolved.
Analysts at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air model this under a 2.5% annual energy demand growth scenario. On that basis, non-fossil energy could represent roughly 29% of total consumption within the decade.
That would mark a meaningful step beyond previous official benchmarks. Supporting infrastructure includes a large hydropower development in Tibet and desert-based renewable installations. A concentrated solar project at close to 15,000 feet in elevation would become the highest facility of its kind on record.
Recent performance lends weight to China’s ambitious green energy plans. Solar and wind installations in 2025 totaled approximately 400 gigawatts, more than any other country has added in a single year. Solar accounted for around 300 gigawatts of that figure.
At the United Nations, President Xi Jinping has pledged to cut the country’s greenhouse gas emissions and committed to substantially scaling up renewable energy capacity in the years to come. No other nation is currently deploying clean energy at comparable scale or speed.
In the meantime, coal remains the dominant complication in Beijing’s long-term sustainability goals. Despite record renewables growth, coal provided more than half of China’s primary energy in 2024. Total coal consumption has risen in absolute terms as electricity demand has grown. During that year, China broke ground on close to 95 gigawatts of new coal-fired capacity, representing the majority of all new coal capacity built worldwide that year.
Despite its role in global warming, coal is the one major fuel source that requires no imports and is central to energy security planning regardless of climate objectives.
Accountability for emissions progress has grown increasingly uncomfortable. China missed its energy intensity target for the first time in the latest planning cycle, a shortfall that implies overall emissions rose by double-digit percentages over the same period. Xi Jinping’s pledge to bring carbon intensity down to 65% of its 2005 level by 2030 is similarly at risk.
Analysts have noted that the government subsequently revised its intensity calculation methodology, and most have interpreted that as adjusting the framework rather than confronting the underlying trend.
Grid-scale battery costs have dropped sharply, and China’s installed battery capacity has expanded roughly twentyfold over four years. Pumped hydropower storage has grown in parallel. These technologies are already cheaper and more efficient than keeping coal plants running continuously in reserve for grid stability.
As storage capacity continues to scale, the rationale for maintaining a large standby coal fleet grows weaker. With it, the financial and political case for the enormous coal investments still on China’s books weakens.
Elsewhere, efforts are also underway at entities like Turbo Energy S.A. (NASDAQ: TURB) to scale the uptake of renewables across continental Europe and internationally. We could therefore soon see these sources of energy becoming dominant in the energy mix of various countries.
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