Solar will soon pass coal as China’s top power capacity source
2 min readSolar power will soon surpass coal as China’s largest source of generation capacity, marking a major milestone in the country’s rapid renewable energy build-out.
The baton will be passed at some point in the third quarter of this year, the China Electricity Council said in its half-year report late Thursday. It may have already happened — at the end of June, solar’s 1,274 gigawatts of capacity was just shy of coal’s 1,275 gigawatts, National Energy Administration officials said in a press briefing Thursday.
Total installed generating capacity is expected to reach 4 300 gigawatts by the end of 2025, with solar and wind accounting for about half of the total, the council said in its latest power industry forecast. The share of thermal power is projected to fall further to 31%.
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The solar milestone is happening even as China’s record pace of renewable installations has slowed significantly this year, after a policy overhaul ended guaranteed revenue for wind and solar projects. The country added 72 gigawatts of solar in the first half of 2026, after adding 93 gigawatts in May 2025 alone, the last month before the new policy went into effect.
Installations are likely to rebound, with China set to add 240 gigawatts of new generating capacity in the second half of the year, a 50% increase from the first half. JPMorgan analysts including Alan Hon also said they expected a second-half resurgence, following the sector’s typical seasonal cycle, according to a research note.
The breakneck expansion of renewable energy is also exposing strains in China’s electricity network. Increasingly, wind and solar projects are being forced to curtail output because grids are unable to absorb all the power they generate. Solar utilization fell to 91.4% in the first half of the year, according to the National Energy Administration, down from 94.3% a year earlier.
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