Read the full article with a lot more detail on the developments in different clean energy sectors as well as the findings and the methodology:
www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-cle...

It matters for the world and for the global climate effort that clean energy is so central to China's economic growth, because it provides a strong motivation for the country's policymakers to sustain the rapid growth of the sector, which in turn would help peak and decline the country's emissions.

The exponential growth in energy storage will hopefully give China's decision-makers confidence that they can keep the lights on without new coal. Storage is a new policy priority, with a new action plan aiming for "distinct international competitive edge".
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The key role of clean energy in China's economy shows that the sector can be a major driver of economic growth and investment. China's clean energy sectors are the largest in the world in absolute terms, but in relation to the size of the economy, these rewards are attainable elsewhere as well.

The “new three” of EVs, batteries, and solar continued to dominate the economic contribution of clean energy in China, generating three-quarters of the value added and attracting more than half of all investment in the sectors overall.

Energy storage was the growth story of 2024, with almost 40 GW of battery storage and 4 GW of electrolyzers added to the grid, up 70% and 100% on year, and pumped hydro storage capacity under construction rising to 190 GW.

The clean energy sectors in order of value: EVs and batteries; solar; other clean power; rail transportation; electricity grids and storage; and energy efficiency.

Investment in clean energy reached 6.8tn yuan ($940bn), close to the global total put into fossil fuels in 2024, and of a similar scale to the overall size of Saudi Arabia’s economy.

Clean energy sectors grew three times as fast as the Chinese economy overall, accounting for 26% of all GDP growth in 2024.

China would have missed its 5% target for GDP growth without the growth from clean technologies, expanding by 3.6% instead of the 5.0% reported.

China's wind and solar industries themselves have expected the effect of the new tariff policy to be manageable, with a significant slowdown in the second half of this year but next year's capacity additions climbing above this year's levels.
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Due to the major economic significance of the clean energy industry and its importance in meeting GDP targets, both the central and provincial governments will want to keep the industry humming, so I expect them to act if the new tariff policy results in a sharp slowdown.
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The jump in capacity means that clean power generation growth will remain strong this year and early next year even if capacity additions slow down. This gives the policymakers and the companies some time to calibrate policies and develop business models under the new system.

For companies in the sector, the lull in installations that follows this rush of course means hard times.

The rush to install will make the numbers for the rest of the year hard to read, as the project pipeline will have been drained to an extent. So it will take some months before we see where the additions of new capacity settle after the change to tariffs.

This massive wave of capacity additions will inevitably be followed by a lull, but it still shows what is possible with the dramatically reduced costs and increased supply capacity of the solar industry in particular.

These wild installation numbers are made possible by rapid growth of the sector in the past few years and by strong profitability, compounded by a rush to install before a June deadline when the tariffs paid to new renewable power plants change.

Chinese companies installed 93 GW of solar and 27 GW of wind in a single month in May. That's about 230 million solar panels and 5300 wind turbines. That's almost 100 solar panels every second, and a wind turbine every 10 minutes.

In the first five months of the year, China added 198 GW of solar and 46 GW of wind. Those turbines and panels will generate as much electricity as:
-Indonesia
-Turkey
-Any U.S. state except for Texas or
-California, Arizona and New Mexico put together
-and much more than the UK

Can't quite get out of my head the conviction that DT knows that had this been the policy in the 1950s, Barack Obama Sr. might never have come to the US....