China is on track to achieve a fully renewable energy system by 2051, nearly a century earlier than the United States, according to a global survey of 150 countries.
The United States could nearly eliminate its carbon emissions and air pollution by 2148 if it maintained the pace of adding 43 GW of renewable energy sources per year, set during the first seven months of 2025, and achieved a “near-electrification” of every energy-consuming sector.
Prof. Mark Jacobson of Stanford University presented this finding and results for 149 other countries in a research paper which was recently published in RSC sustainability.
The “most substantial and encouraging finding,” Jacobson said, is the “pace at which China is transforming its energy economy.”
China, which added renewable energy generation capacity at an annual rate of 397 GW in the first ten months of 2025, could at that pace eliminate CO2 emissions and air pollution by 2051, with near-electrification of all energy sectors.
Whether China will electrify transportation, buildings and industry by 2051 is “an uncertainty,” but “some recent data appears encouraging,” the paper said. It noted that more than half of vehicles sold in China in 2024 were battery-electric vehicles. It also said that China is “already the world’s largest market” for electric heat pumps and “has the manufacturing base to ramp up that market.”
Given that the United States and China have similar land areas and the U.S. economy is larger than China’s, the paper said China’s progress “suggests that the main barriers” to America achieving a renewable energy buildout as large as China’s “are social and political, not technical or economic.”
China is installing renewable energy generation at a rate that is “nearly two orders of magnitude of the rate at which it is installing new nuclear power,” and “is also not diverted much by carbon capture, direct air capture, blue hydrogen, biofuels, or biomass.”
Although Canada already produces 16% of the renewable electricity it needs to reach 100% renewable energy across all energy sectors, Canada would reach a 100% target “after the year 2350,” based on the “slow pace” at which it has recently increased renewable generation.
A “potential benefit” of the research, the article said, is that it gives countries a “realistic picture of their progress” so they can then determine “whether faster progress is necessary.”
The examples provided by China and several other countries out of the 150 countries analyzed “suggest that the world as a whole can succeed in a rapid transition if all countries make a strong social and political commitment to a transition and focus like a laser on clean, renewable energy.”
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