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While the Trump administration is slapping steep tariffs on solar panel imports, China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) announced Wednesday that, for the first time, the country added more new solar capacity than thermal capacity.
The National Energy Administration's (NEA) newly released data shows that last year more than 52.83 gigawatts of solar was installed in China. Solar power production jumped by 68 percent, and for the first time, it exceeded the amount of new thermal power capacity in China.
The country added 44 gigawatts of coal and gas-based thermal power last year. On a comparative scale, China solar power exceeds the total installed capacity of Australia’s entire grid. The total solar power generation has crossed 130 gigawatts, constituting nearly 7.3 percent of all national power generation.
A fisherman is netting fish near a solar power project under construction in East China's Zhejiang province, Dec 24, 2016.
Experts feel that in the next two years, China’s total installed solar capacity will be around 250 gigawatts.
The NEA also revealed that total wind energy generation capacity in the country had reached 163 gigawatts. Officials also maintained wind power wastage was reduced by 5.2 percent last year. In Gansu Province, wind power wastage dropped by more than 10 percent. In Jilin, Xinjiang, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia and Liaoning, it dropped by more than five percent.
A section of experts are speculating that China is set to become a world leader in renewable energy generation. There is a consensus that the US' decision to increase the price of imported solar panels by 30 percent will make solar power generation expensive and boost thermal power generation.
Ji Lin, executive secretary of the Green Environmental Institute, told CGTN that the new announcement seems to be a politically-driven decision by the US administration.
“Moving forward, we will be assessing the short and long-term actual impact on the US market for Chinese solar products. At this stage, it's too early to anticipate how this decision impacts US-domestic low-carbon development,” he said.
(CGTN)
