Historic Milestone: China’s Installed Wind and Solar Power Capacity Surpasses Coal Power
On April 25, the National Energy Administration announced that in the first quarter of 2025, China added a total of 74.33 million kilowatts of new wind and solar power capacity, bringing the cumulative installed capacity to 1.482 billion kilowatts. This marks the first time that the combined capacity of wind and solar power has surpassed that of coal power, which stands at 1.451 billion kilowatts.
As the installation of wind and solar power continues to grow rapidly, it is anticipated that the surpassing of coal power capacity by renewables will become a regular occurrence. In the first quarter, the total electricity generation from wind and solar reached 536.4 billion kilowatt-hours, accounting for 22.5% of the total electricity consumption in society, an increase of 4.3 percentage points compared to the same period last year. This shift is also contributing to a rise in the share of non-fossil energy in total electricity generation, which reached 39.8%, up 4.8 percentage points year-on-year.
The increase in wind and solar power generation, coupled with a low year-on-year growth rate of 2.5% in total electricity consumption, resulted in an additional 111 billion kilowatt-hours generated from wind and solar compared to the previous year, significantly exceeding the overall increase in electricity consumption of 58.2 billion kilowatt-hours.
On April 28, the National Energy Administration held a press conference to discuss the energy situation and the integration of renewable energy into the grid for the first quarter. In total, 76.75 million kilowatts of new renewable energy capacity was added nationwide in the first quarter of 2025, a 21% increase year-on-year, representing about 90% of all new installations. This included 2.13 million kilowatts from hydropower, 14.62 million kilowatts from wind power, 59.71 million kilowatts from solar power, and 290,000 kilowatts from biomass energy.
As of the end of March 2025, total installed renewable energy capacity in the country reached 1.966 billion kilowatts, marking a 24% increase year-on-year, which constitutes about 57.3% of China’s total power generation capacity. This includes 438 million kilowatts from hydropower, 535 million kilowatts from wind power, 946 million kilowatts from solar power, and 46 million kilowatts from biomass energy.
Original article by NenPower, If reposted, please credit the source: https://nenpower.com/blog/china-achieves-milestone-as-wind-and-solar-capacity-surpasses-coal-power-for-the-first-time/
