China is set to up the ante on renewables in a new ‘Five-Year Plan’ that will see a total investment of US$360 billion (2.5 trillion yuan) by 2020.
Citing harmful greenhouse gas emissions, the Chinese National Energy Administration (NEA) is making a bid to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels. The Plan also will create jobs in clean energy for around 13 million people; overall providing an economic and social benefit as well as an environmental one, according to the NEA.
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The administration said that investment will be used to procure clean energy including wind, solar, hydro, biomass and geothermal, but did not specify on how the funds would be spent.
However, the country's goal for 110GW by 2020 was endorsed by the NEA last month, who revealed then in separate plan designs to tackle curtailment, improve project quality and further reduce its feed-in tariff. Specifically on solar, that plan detailed that 11 provinces had been assigned preferential status for solar deployment. China became the world's top solar generator last year.
Despite the ambitious plans to procure more clean energy resources, as well as nuclear power, just 15% of the energy mix will come from renewables by 2020 – equivalent to around 580 million tonnes of coal.