China will have more installed solar power capacity than coal-fired generation capacity as early as this quarter, Chinese authorities have said.
As of the end of June, solar power capacity stood at 1,274 gigawatts (GW), just below the total coal-fired installed capacity of 1,275 GW.
“By the end of June, total solar power capacity had caught up with coal, effectively tying it as the country’s largest primary power source,” says the mid-year report released by the China Electricity Council (CEC) cited by local media.
Renewable energy sources have become the leading driver of new power capacity additions, the report by the CEC said, as carried by China Daily.
In the first half of 2026, China’s total non-fossil energy power generation grew by 8.5% from a year earlier, said Hou Wenjie, director of the statistics and data intelligence department at the CEC.
“The incremental growth of non-fossil energy power generation accounted for 70.7 percent of the total incremental power generation nationwide,” the official added.
Official Chinese data showed earlier this week that the share of coal in China’s electricity output fell in the first half of 2026 to below 50% for the first time on record, in a landmark achievement of the Chinese policy to boost non-fossil power sources.
The share of coal averaged 49.7% of China’s total electricity output in the first half of this year, official data showed on Thursday.
As the share of coal slipped, electricity generation from renewable energy rose by about 9% from a year earlier, according to the data from China’s National Energy Administration (NEA).
Renewable energy accounted for 41.2% of China’s total electricity generation in the first half of 2026, with wind and solar combined generating almost 25% of the total power output.
Despite the milestone of reducing coal power output to below 50% of total generation for the first time ever, China continues to rely on coal for power for industry and to maintain the reliability of the power grids.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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