As of at least 2024, China has one third of the world's installed solar panel capacity. Most of China's solar power is generated within its western provinces and is transferred to other regions of the country.
Solar modules, which are fully assembled solar panels, accounted for 90% ($23.8 bn) of China’s total solar exports by value in the first half of 2023. Over the last 12 months, China exported 111 GW of solar modules to Europe, the same amount as the total installed PV capacity of the United States.
China alone produces at least 80 % of the main components of PVs. Also, more than 30 % of the cumulative installed capacity is in China, the top exporter of manufactured solar PVs in the World with competitive manufacturing costs that reached less than $0.24/W.
China added almost twice as much utility-scale solar and wind power capacity in 2023 than in any other year. By the first quarter of 2024, China’s total utility-scale solar and wind capacity reached 758 GW, though data from China Electricity Council put the total capacity, including distributed solar, at 1,120 GW.
The installed solar PV capacity in China increasing from 130.25 GW in 2017 to 392.61 GW in 2022 (IRENA, 2023). Moreover, at the United Nations Climate Ambition Summit, China further announced that the total installed capacity of wind and solar power will reach over 1200 GW by 2030 (The United Nations et al., 2020).
Wind and solar now account for 37% of the total power capacity in the country, an 8% increase from 2022, and widely expected to surpass coal capacity, which is 39% of the total right now, in 2024. Cumulative annual utility-scale solar & wind power capacity in China, in gigawatts (GW)