China added record amounts of wind and solar power capacity in 2025, while polluting energy from coal and gas also soared, according to data released Wednesday by the National Energy Administration.
The world’s second-largest economy added 543 gigawatts of new energy capacity from all sources last year, about double Germany’s entire electricity generation capacity, as the country looks to power the energy-intensive industries of the future while meeting its emissions reduction targets.
That included 315 gigawatts of solar power and 119 gigawatts of wind power, increasing total installed power generation capacity by 16.1 percent compared to the previous year.
But dirty energy from gas and coal also rose by about 93 gigawatts – 75 percent more than the country added in 2024 – increasing total installed thermal energy capacity by 6.3 percent.
The record additions to renewables equated to about 17,000 wind turbines and 500 million solar panels, said Lauri Myllyvirta, chief analyst at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
“That is two wind turbines per hour and an installed solar panel area of twenty football fields per hour,” he wrote on X.
With China’s energy demand still rising, the latest additions “will help replace fossil fuel power generation well into next year,” Myllyvirta said.
However, the massive expansions of coal and gas plants will likely lead to declining utilization and “risk creating new barriers to clean energy,” he wrote.
China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, but it is also a renewable energy powerhouse.
It has set a target to peak CO2 emissions by 2030, reduce them by at least 7 percent by 2035 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.
