China has been the world’s biggest polluter since 2006, but in recent years, it has emerged as a clean energy superpower. Huge swathes of China – from the mountain plateaus of Tibet, where the sun shines brighter in the thin air, to the coast off Qingdao – are now covered by solar panels and wind farms.
It is the first country in the world to have installed more than a million megawatts (MW) of solar power – almost double Europe and America’s combined solar capacity, generating enough electricity to power the entire EU.
In May 2025, it installed solar panels at a rate of up to 100 a second. It’s also betting big on wind: a surge in turbine installations means that its wind capacity is now well over three times higher than that of its nearest competitor, the US.
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What explains this shift?
With a population of 1.4 billion and accounting for around a quarter of global manufacturing, China is the world’s largest consumer of energy. Beijing regards its reliance on Middle Eastern oil and gas as a dangerous vulnerability: about 70% of its oil is imported, much of it passing through the Straits of Hormuz and Malacca. China’s rise as a manufacturer was built on coal, but its leaders have also long been concerned about pollution and climate change. Green energy is seen as a solution to all these problems.
Is China a green economy?
In some ways, yes. Analysts believe that China’s emissions may have already peaked. But Beijing isn’t just betting on renewable electricity. It continues to build coal-fired power plants at an eyewatering rate: 85 are due to open this year alone, and it’s building 36 nuclear reactors. China’s National Energy Administration installed over 500 gigawatts (GW) of new power capacity in 2025; the UK grid’s total capacity is around 70 GW.
As a result, China is sometimes described as the world’s first “electrostate”. It is electrifying everything from industry to cars. And the role of green electricity is growing. Coal, which accounted for about 80% of electricity in 2000, provided just 55% in 2025, while wind and solar rose to around 20% from practically nothing over that period. Beijing sees green tech as a source of energy security, future prosperity and influence abroad.
How has it built up this industry?
The Made in China 2025 industrial plan, launched in 2015, identified it as a core strategic sector, concentrating on the “new three” industries – solar, batteries and electric vehicles, moving away from lower-value sectors such as textiles and cheap electronics. China also moved to dominate supply chains for the raw materials: cobalt, nickel, graphite, rare-earth metals. Local governments offered cheap land, subsidised electricity, and state-backed credit to manufacturers.
Much of the groundwork had been done before. Chinese researchers studied in Europe and North America, where all these technologies were pioneered; Western companies sold equipment and production lines. Since then, China has left its rivals in the dust.
What effect has this had?
China now controls 90% of the world’s solar manufacturing, more than 70% of wind turbines, 80% of battery cells, and 70% of electric vehicles. This is leading to plummeting costs across the world: solar panel prices have fallen by some 90% in the past decade (though installation costs have fallen more modestly). The solar boom means that panels are now a ubiquitous sight on rooftops in Pakistan, India and across Africa, providing low-cost energy for millions of people.
In March, driven by the Iran war, exports of Chinese solar panels hit a record 68 GW-worth, double the previous month, with demand especially strong in Southeast Asia and Africa. Chinese wind turbines are now 30%-50% cheaper than those made in the US or Europe.
What are the downsides to this?
The UK, like much of the West, has been wiped out as a producer of solar panels and batteries; China has cornered the market. Europe still has a wind turbine industry – there is a major Siemens Gamesa factory in Hull – but they rely heavily on crucial Chinese components, such as high-strength magnets.
There are ethical concerns about Chinese green tech supply chains: over 50% of polysilicon, a key raw material used in solar panels, is produced in Xinjiang, where Uighur Muslims have been subjected to forced labour.
There are also national security concerns about China’s chokehold over a crucial sector: theoretically power units could contain kill-switches or data-harvesting features. Against this has to be set the benefits to the world of cheap tech, subsidised by the Chinese state – providing power that is cheaper, cleaner and less vulnerable to supply shocks or price jumps than oil and gas.
Will the boom continue?
Despite its apparent successes, China’s solar industry is currently in the midst of a major downturn: all five of the major Chinese players in this sector posted losses for the last quarter, totalling seven billion yuan (£770 million). This is partly because of a production glut driving prices down, but also because exporting Chinese panels is becoming more difficult: the US Uighur Forced Labour Prevention Act bans the import of goods made with materials sourced from Xinjiang; India has imposed new tariffs; and the rollout of solar energy has slowed in Europe, owing to grid connection limits.
China’s renewable sector, like the UK’s but on a larger scale, also faces storage and connection problems, because renewables are intermittent and often far from population centres.
But the direction of travel is clear. According to the International Energy Agency, solar will become the biggest single electricity source in the early 2030s, with wind power second in line. And China will be at the forefront of that transformation.
Engineers vs. lawyers
In his book “Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future”, Dan Wang argues that China is an “engineering state”, run by leaders with technical backgrounds, while the US is a “lawyerly society”, driven by a legal mindset.
China’s technocratic, top-down culture allows it to quickly build megaprojects, construct vast numbers of homes, and make long-term plans to dominate certain sectors of manufacturing. The rights-based mindset of the US, by contrast, often leads to gridlock, slower infrastructure development, and an obsession with process rather than output.
There are great human costs to treating China’s society as a big engineering exercise, the most famous example being the one-child policy. Economically, it also often leads to inefficiencies and overproduction. The state is often not an effective allocator of capital; in recent years, driven by government subsidies and centralised production goals, supply has massively outpaced demand in the real estate and green tech sectors.
On the other hand, the US free market system is arguably too fixated on short-term profits and efficiencies; while fast-changing political priorities – and President Trump’s dislike of renewables – mean that it has surrendered leadership in solar and wind.
