China says a third of electricity will come from renewables by 2025
SHANGHAI, June 1 (Reuters) — China will aim to ensure that its grids source about 33% of power from renewable sources by 2025, up from 28.8% in 2020, the state planning agency said on Wednesday in a new “five-year plan” for the renewable sector.
China’s total renewable energy consumption is set to reach about 1 billion tonnes of standard coal equivalent (TCE) by 2025, as the country bids to raise the share of non-fossil fuels in total energy use to 20%, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said.
Non-fossil fuels accounted for 15.4% of total primary energy consumption in 2020.
China, the biggest source of climate-warming greenhouse gases, has pledged to raise total wind and solar capacity to 1,200 gigawatts by 2030, almost double the current rate, with plans to build large-scale renewable energy bases in northwestern desert regions.
Related Knowledge Center: ENERGY BASICS: renewables
Renewable energy sources — once the fuel of the future, then practical in specific, narrow applications — are increasingly economic mainstream sources of power generation. Hydropower was long the mainstay of U.S. renewable electricity generation, although wind power surpassed hydro for the first time in 2019, and solar continues its rapid growth. The continued growth of wind and solar, with their fluctuations, is tied in part to improvements in storage technology: batteries.