Simmone Shah
On Wednesday, China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) announced that the country would be investing in major renewable energy projects—developing new offshore wind farms and large scale clean energy bases that combine solar and wind farms.
It’s the latest move by the country, both a leader in renewable energy and the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, to make inroads in the green energy transition.
China’s renewable energy dominance has been a long time coming, experts say. “Several of the clean energy industries were identified by the government several decades ago as strategic industries, where they really wanted to invest and position themselves as the global leader,” says Joanna Lewis, director of the science, technology, and international affairs program at Georgetown University. “This has really been a long-term strategic effort on behalf of the government to both put in place policies that would promote the deployment of renewables domestically within China, but also build up the industrial capacity to allow them to actually manufacture the technologies as well.”
What is China's climate target?
In 2020, China announced that the country would reach peak carbon emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. Since then, the country has been making strides towards adopting clean energy. That same year, the Chinese government pledged to double its renewable energy capacity by 2030—only to reach that goal six years ahead of schedule. And in 2024, the country led the world in energy transition investment, accounting for two-thirds of the $2.1 trillion spent globally last year on everything from power grids to electric transport, according to BloombergNEF.
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