China's installed solar power capacity surpasses coal power for the first time

Related:

“Data Page: Total solar capacity”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado, and Max Roser (2023) - “Energy”. Data adapted from IRENA. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260901-130259/grapher/i... [online resource] (archived on September 1, 2026). [My note: This is already out of date, as the world has surpassed 3TW of solar PV capacity in 2026]

Bloomberg: Solar Surpasses Coal as China’s Top Source of Power Capacity - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-01/solar-sur... | https://archive.today/i3TSe - August 31st, 2026

The World Crossed a Major Solar Milestone [3TW] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49151977 - August 2026

> The world has reached the 3TW threshold of solar power, with the first terawatt taking 10 years to deploy and the next 2TW taking less than five years. Forecasters expect the world to deploy more than 9TW of solar by 2036, with poor countries' share of solar deployment expected to start growing again from this year onward. The main constraint for developing countries to adopt solar power is the lack of accessible financing, and the growth of solar power is also limited by the need for energy storage, such as lithium-ion batteries, to absorb excess power. [My note: Draw your attention to rate of change in deployment of each additional TW of capacity, we continue to speed up]

China Crosses Energy Milestone as Coal Falls Below 50% of Power - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49110187 - July 2026

China Keeps Beating Renewable Targets And Missing Nuclear Ones - https://cleantechnica.com/2026/07/25/china-renewable-targets... - July 25th, 2026

> China set a 2020 wind target of 210 GW and finished the year with about 282 GW. Its solar target was 110 GW, while delivery reached roughly 253 GW. The later commitment to reach at least 1,200 GW of combined wind and solar by 2030 was crossed in 2024, six years early. By the end of 2025, China had about 640 GW of wind and 1,202 GW of solar, for a combined 1,842 GW. Nuclear moved in the other direction: about 50 GW against a 58 GW target in 2020, and about 62 GW against a 70 GW target in 2025. The current goal of 110 GW by 2030 may still be achieved, but the previous record gives no reason to convert it directly into a forecast.

China: Renewables now top 60 percent of capacity - https://denkstrom.org/en/goodnews/china-renewables-500-gw-ca... - June 1st, 2026

> If China maintains expansion at the 430-gigawatt-per-year level, installed wind and solar capacity would reach roughly 2,700 gigawatts by 2027. That would be more than five times the entire wind and solar capacity in the EU. Whether this value is realistic depends mainly on two factors: expansion of high-voltage transmission lines connecting generation and consumption regions, and political will to actually decommission the coal power plant fleet.