By Robert Bradley Jr.
Ethan Tan on social media shared the findings of a recent, neglected study on how China’s wind and solar push is more bark than bite. “China has a lot of renewable, zero emission power gen capacity,” he writes. “But they are mainly located too far to matter.”
He quotes from “Why Wind and Solar Power is Going to ‘Waste’ in China in the Global Energy Crisis” (South China Morning Post), which summarized a study (paywall) from Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).
The “wasted” wind and solar energy stems from inflexible grid management that continues to position coal as a stabilising source of power and stymies a clean energy expansion that could otherwise generate electricity equivalent to the needs of France, according to analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) think tank.
By the end of March, renewable energy accounted for 60.4 per cent of China’s total installed capacity and accounted for about 37 per cent of actual power generation in the first quarter, according to Xinhua.”
“So,” Tan continues, quoting from the article:
Data from the National Energy Administration in April revealed that in the first quarter, China’s electricity consumption rose by 5.2 per cent year on year. This increase of about 120 terawatt-hours in power demand could have been “comfortably” covered by China’s record-breaking increase in solar and wind capacity, which is capable of generating an extra 160TWh compared to the same period last year, according to CREA.
“This potential clean energy supply,” Tan notes, “could have reached 170TWh if nuclear and hydropower were also included, with the potential clean energy supply exceeding ‘the total power generation of France over the same period’.”
But despite the capacity increase, the actual increase in clean power generation was just 60TWh, with wind generation showing “almost no growth” despite a 23 per cent rise in wind capacity and a 33 per cent rise in solar capacity compared to the first quarter of 2025. This was due to a drop in the capacity factor of solar and wind power – or the electricity output per unit of installed capacity – which led to wasted renewable energy and a growth in fossil fuel-based power generation.
The key reason for ‘wasted’ wind and solar generation was the inflexible management of coal power plants and power grids, not a lack of grid infrastructure,” CREA said.
Coal-fired power generation is largely operated via medium- and long-term contracts to supply fixed amounts of electricity at fixed prices, meaning there is no incentive for adjustments in output to make space for solar and wind.
China, already losing money on its wind and solar buildout, evidently has a tiger by the tail with transmission capacity to get solar and wind from nowhere to somewhere.
“By the end of March, renewable energy accounted for 60.4 per cent of China’s total installed capacity and accounted for about 37 per cent of actual power generation in the first quarter, according to Xinhua.”
Not bad.
Not mentioned is how much was hydro.
Yep, they like to use “hydro” as crutch to make “renewable” production numbers look decent.
Or nuclear….
Renewables supplied 35.58% in 2025 but hydro was 38.8% of this. Oops!
Nuclear isn’t counted as renewable, but biofuel, waste, solar thermal, geo-thermal, and tidal power do all count. While China has experimented with those it’s not clear they still provide any power so the split now seems to be, very crudely, one third hydro, one third solar, one third wind.
There was ~1.2 TW of solar capacity as of 2025 though wind capacity is less – predicted to hit 1 TW of capacity about 2028. Coal had 1 TW of capacity back in 2021, yet produced ~4.6x as much power in 2025!
Obviously there’s some variation over the years, but it’s pretty clear that wind and solar capacity has a vastly different output profile to coal, especially when there’s no sun or wind!!!
“Renewables supplied 35.58% in 2025 but hydro was 38.8% of this.”
Still not bad.
It’s not nothing but it’s also not economically intelligent.
So about 22% overall. Pretty terrible.
And that’s assuming the numbers are reliable.
Or how much was generated WHEN NOT NEEDED.
Not bad???
What happened to the other 23%? Or is that the 23% increase producing nothing at all??
There’s an obvious reason why China firms it’s renewables with Coal!
There’s an obvious reason why China burns coal for electricity and builds renewables for virtue signalling!
FIFY
Yep.
China’s installed wind & solar capacity is just the showroom so they can demonstrate their wares to the gullible Gweilo who turn up hell bent on lavishing their taxpayers’ $$$$$s on those virtue-signaling, useless, parasitic imposts on efficient, reliable, economic, coal-fueled utility power grids.
The Chinese don’t need w & s at all for their own purposes.
They have coal and nuclear out the wazoo, and keep building more of these every year.
The amount of coal China is importing exceeds the amount they admit to burning.
Which means 1 of 2 things…
.
1) They’re burning far more than they admit.
2) They’re stockpiling coal to corner the market in 50 years.
E) All of the above!
.
Likely answer is “E”
While it might be not bad it is totally pointless since there is no climate emergency and CO2 is not dangerous.
Not bad.
Nick, again I am deeply disappointed in you. You were once much better than this.
He got tired of faking it?
Mr. W: Hey, it takes alot of effort to sift out non-conforming “data” before you make yer chart.
23% rise in capacity giving ZERO additional generation defines Wind Energy in a Nut-Zero shell.
Quote from the article:-
“Coal-fired power generation is largely operated via medium- and long-term contracts to supply fixed amounts of electricity at fixed prices, meaning there is no incentive for adjustments in output to make space for solar and wind.”
Wind and solar cannot compete on this basis, nor can they compete on price. Why would you run coal at a lower level, and so at a higher cost just to make way for a variable source?
Remove renewables from a grid market and you remove all the wild fluctuations in supply that make market price fluctuate so much.
It is actually COAL that is make huge gains in China.
Wind and solar are a small percentage of actual energy used.
The strategy could be because China understands that in the coming years, their grid is going to be increasingly connected to car batteries that will be able to soak up excess energy. Their high power (eg 1MW+) charging stations are also battery backed.
Coal needs to be able to provide sufficient energy to cover all eventualities but as more storage comes online, the coal can ramp down.
Basically Western grids run with much lower capacity to vary whereas China’s grid is over specified. That is, incidentally, everyone’s dream here where they seem to want copious amounts of (nuclear) energy available.
Where does the power come from when the “extra” isn’t there?
How many people are going to put up with having their car batteries drained over night because the renewable power wasn’t available.
Here is the opening line from the article
Charged with excess, not drained.
Car batteries don’t “soak up excess energy” while they’re driving down the road. They need to be stationary and plugged in. That’s usually at night when there is no sun, and little wind. The so-called “fast chargers” won’t help much either since the grids aren’t built to deliver the power required for large numbers on fast charging. That’s a rarely discussed limitation of EV fast charging.
Most cars are stationary most of the time. I fully expect EVs will tend to be plugged in, especially if there are measures in place to charge cheaply when there is excess energy on the grid. That’s likely to happen on Western grids too.
China doesn’t appear to be in a hurry to get rid of their coal but they’re still building renewable energy rapidly.
The fast chargers are connected to the grid via batteries to help moderate the demand on the grid whilst still allowing for intermittent large loads. Managing demand is half the battle with running a grid.
What planet has a reversable charger for every car that is not moviing? And how many fast chargers are connected to the grid via batteries? (Spoiler: almost none.)
Reversable charger? You just need a regular charger on a smart meter with the appropriate tarrif.
China has them and for demand management, they make perfect sense. The fact is that the world is waking up to the need for storage to back the renewables and its finally being implemented.
Then why don’t all EVs have what are called “bidirectional chargers?”
Many do, but they have to be designed for it.
I’m not suggesting bidirectional energy flow. Where is that coming from?
It’d be good for the grid overall but as you say, isn’t a thing yet.
I’m suggesting an EV plugged into a smart meter on a suitable cheap tariff as incentive could, in the future, be triggered to charge when there is excess energy on the grid.
Good clarification, thanks.
So now you are going to force employers and shopping centers to not only provide charging units for all parking spaces, but require individuals to plug their cars into these stations whenever they stop.
How delightfully totalitarian of you.
That’s right. Shoppers will be forced to comply with the threat of compulsory attendance at the MarkW school of reasoning.
And what will leaving your EV “Plugged In” after a single use of say 40 miles (20% of capacity) while at work, then driving 40 miles home (20% of capacity) to plug in again, do to the capacity and longevity of your EV battery especially if done 5 days a week? (10 -20% recharges per week)
It’ll degrade your capacity and battery life running it down to 80% then recharging to 100% 10 times a week.
Most EVs actually won’t be “Plugged in” during the work week but for 1 of 5 days
This not even close to being true. Most of China’s population live in very high density apartment complexes within very high density cities. There will never, ever be sufficient charging stations in this environment to make a difference. I conducted business across China for years and can tell from direct observation your speculation is way off base.
Reality is such a bitch, just as you point out.
👍
Why is it always everything or nothing with so many people? China has an enormous number of cars. Enormous. And over 50% of sales are EVs today.
And China experiences upwards of 43,000 EV, EBike and EScooter battery fires every year
What percentage of lithium batteries catch fire?
AI Overview
Lithium-ion battery fires are incredibly rare, with incident rates for personal electronics and electric vehicles (EVs) estimated between 0.00005% and 0.004% per year, or roughly 1 in 1 million to 1 in 10 million units.
However, the risk varies significantly depending on the device:
Electric Vehicles (EVs): EVs experience around 25 fires per 100,000 vehicles sold (0.025%). This makes them significantly less likely to catch fire than internal combustion engine (ICE) cars, which ignite at a rate of about 1,530 per 100,000.
Personal Mobility Devices (PMDs): Unregulated or damaged e-bikes, e-scooters, and hoverboards pose a much higher risk. These devices, often linked to aftermarket or faulty chargers, make up a disproportionate number of battery fire investigations.
The leading causes of battery failures include manufacturing defects, physical damage (puncturing or crushing), using incompatible chargers, and overcharging. To mitigate risks, ensure you only use certified chargers, inspect batteries for swelling or damage, and learn more safety practices through resources like the NFPA Lithium-Ion Battery Safety page.
Car batteries? Are you actually that delusional?
Rube Goldberg would be highly impressed.
The Chinese must be dumber than we thought.
As with anything China, how much of this is true?
They are not dumb. But the energy system and electric energy generation in China is still 100% planned economy in an autoritarian state. So they are doing what Xi and the KPCh (so essentially also Xi) is ordering them to do.
Nah. If they were they would shut down coal plants in favor of worse-than-useless wind and solar.
Wind and solar can’t function without some alternative source of electricity. By themselves, they cannot power a modern society. That’s why wind and solar should be junked as soon as possible. They are not up to the job. To keep them on the job requires a duplicate fossil fuel/ nuclear power generation infrastructure. Double the requirement to keep things running and you double the cost of your electricity.
Using conventional generation eliminates all these problems associated with wind and solar.
The only reason wind and solar are used is to prevent a non-existent climate crisis. Wind and solar are the problem, not the solution.
If you look at the people who buy into the myth, especially as China is a huge producer of this crap, they are not dumb at all.
In Germany they have installed about twice the capacity of wind and sun than needed in average for the whole country’s need. The problem is that they have hardly any storage capacity and dump their surplus at high wind and sun on the European market and thus mainly Switzerland and Austria that can reduce their hydro output.
It gets that far that they have to stop their windmills when there is too much sun, while they need imports from the nuclear plants of France when the sun is down and too little wind:
https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=week&year=2026&source=public&week=28
In winter the opposite happens with “dunkelflaute”: lack of sun and hardly any wind, like happened during three weeks end December in whole Europa…
That makes that they have the highest price for electricity of Europe, together with wind champion Denmark…
No wonder that the industry of Germany is in deep trouble…
Lack of adequate transmission capacity prevents transfer of electricity ‘from producer to consumer’; the is a big problem in Denmark where several potential consumers (not least data centers) recently have been put on the (very long!) ‘waiting list’! 😎
Transmission lines aside, unreliable energy is expensive to make reliable.
That’s the heart of the problem.
“Green” energy in Denmark is more illusion than reality. https://www.facebook.com/reel/798112986392238
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2024/04/Hansen-Danish-Energy-Transition.pdf
China builds wind and solar to look good and to test what they are selling to the Western Countries, they are not building it to power their country, they are building coal, nuclear and hydro to power their country. They are not stupid enough to depend on wind and solar to power their important power grids, that would make their power grids as unreliable as power grids in the Western countries.
China does appear to be preparing to take Taiwan, when they do that it would be very helpful for them to be able to shut down the Power Grids in Western Countries who might oppose the takeover of Taiwan, it will be easy for them to shut down Western Countries Wind and Solar Farms and Power Grids because they designed and built them and likely operate some of them.
Good points.
Do you think Xi will attack before Trump is out of office? That would be a roll of the dice. He can’t predict how Trump will react.
“Output Lags Capacity.”
AND ALWAYS WILL, since the Sun doesn’t shine “on demand” nor does the wind blow at the ‘right’ speeds on demand.
“This was due to a drop in the capacity factor of solar and wind power – or the electricity output per unit of installed capacity ”
“Capacity factor” does NOT scale with the amount of such useless crap you build, because… SEE ABOVE. AND IT NEVER WILL.
In fact, it is most likely that the more of that useless crap you build, THE MORE THE CAPACITY FACTOR WILL DROP, since building more “capacity” means MORE NON-PRODUCTIVE EQUIPMENT every time the breezes and sunshine are not “cooperative.”
“Coal-fired power generation is largely operated via medium- and long-term contracts to supply fixed amounts of electricity at fixed prices, meaning there is no incentive for adjustments in output to make space for solar and wind.”
And why should they “make space” for crap that doesn’t work more often than it does?! All that will do is INCREASE THEIR ELECTRIC PRICES by idling what WORKS in favor of what DOESN’T WORK.
The STUPID, it BURNS!!
China is certainly building out a lot of solar. The amount of minerals needed for this scale is almost unimaginable, but the media and other solar advocates point to these monstrosities as being “green”. While I likely won’t be around to see the ultimate result of these build outs, my bet is that the life span of these complexes will be in the 15 to 20 year range.
https://www.autonocion.com/us/great-wall-solar-panels-china/
https://electrek.co/2026/07/09/china-hami-solar-molten-salt-storage/
https://www.newsweek.com/china-builds-colossal-solar-farm-seven-times-size-manhattan-10901160
But the Chinese are not entirely stupid. Included in their “Great “Wall” of solar is coal.
“As Power magazine reported, the base was designed as a 16-gigawatt hybrid, with 8 gigawatts of solar, 4 gigawatts of wind, and 4 gigawatts of coal-fired generation, plus storage. The sun does the headline work. The coal is there to keep the grid steady when the sun is not cooperating”.
So after all the hand waving China still increases their coal energy use more than the ROW decreases theirs. Isn’t “renewable energy” supposed to displace fossil fuel use?
How many 100’s of $billions have the Chinese spent on useless crap, supposedly to “look good” or try to “fool the west”? Doesn’t sound very smart to me. That’s a lot of opportunity lost as well as money down the crapper.
50 Chinese ghost cities in which no one lives. How many wind and solar farms are sitting idle in the countryside to keep those cities company?
It’s a justifiable investment for them, more than recovered from the huge export income from sales to the Western idiocrats.
Perhaps the unreferenced sources used for this article contain the information, but I could find no information about the credibility of the data used to generate the numbers in the article.
It’s been a few years, but in one of my careers, comparisons of Chinese published data against other sources indicated a, let’s say, discrepancy. I doubt if there has been a major revision in the CCP’s methods for deciding what to publicly release in the intervening years. So, until the authors of studies of Chinese government anything include a range of how adjusted the data might be, I recommend taking the results of those studies with a grain, or block, or truckload of salt.
Spot on.