National Energy Administration: China's Installed Capacity of Wind and Solar Power Surpasses That of Thermal Power for the First Time

On April 25, the National Energy Administration (NEA) announced that in Q1 2025, China's combined new installations of wind and PV power generation reached 74.33 million kW, with cumulative installed capacity reaching 1.482 billion kW (including 536 million kW for wind power and 946 million kW for PV power), surpassing thermal power installed capacity (1.451 billion kW) for the first time. In the future, as the new installations of wind and PV power continue to grow rapidly, it will become the norm for wind and PV power installed capacity to exceed thermal power installed capacity.

In Q1, the combined power generation of wind and PV reached 536.4 billion kWh, accounting for 22.5% of the total electricity consumption in society, an increase of 4.3 percentage points YoY (driving the share of non-fossil energy power generation to reach 39.8%, up 4.8 percentage points YoY). Driven by the rapid growth of wind and PV power and the relatively low YoY growth rate of total electricity consumption in society in Q1 (2.5%), the combined power generation of wind and PV increased by 111 billion kWh YoY, significantly exceeding the increase in total electricity consumption in society (58.2 billion kWh).

It is reported that as of the end of June 2024, the cumulative installed capacity of solar and wind power reached 1.18 billion kW, surpassing the installed capacity of coal-fired power (1.17 billion kW). This also marked the first time that China's new energy power generation installed capacity exceeded that of coal-fired power.