China crushes clean energy goal, still polluting more than twice the U.S.
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China crushes clean energy goal, still polluting more than twice the U.S.

China is celebrating reaching a clean energy goal six years ahead of schedule, but a glut of renewable generation capacity isn’t putting much of a dent in its pollution problem.

According to a statement from the National Energy Administration, China added 25 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar capacity in July, expanding the nation’s total clean energy capacity to 1,206 GW. In 2020, President Xi Jinping established the goal of having at least 1,200 GW of renewable energy resources by 2030. China is on track to add 70 GW of installed wind power capacity and 190 GW of solar capacity by the end of 2024, per the statement.

China has been rapidly scaling renewable energy capacity in recent years. In 2022, it installed almost as much solar as the rest of the world combined. In 2023, China still managed to double new solar installations while also building out a huge amount of wind and nearly quadrupling its energy storage capacity.

Despite all that clean generation, according to the 2024 Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy, China is still the world’s worst polluter, and by a fair margin. The country discharged a record 11.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) in 2023, a 642 million ton jump from 2022- its largest annual increase since 2011. The U.S. shed 158.5 million tons of CO2 year-over-year, producing 4.64 billion tons in 2023 (the second-most globally), our lowest mark since COVID shut down commerce in 2020.

The three largest energy polluters in 2023 were China, the United States, and India, which together accounted for more than 53% of all global energy pollution last year, according to the report.

The top carbon dioxide emitters from energy production (courtesy: 2024 Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy)

According to The New York Times, China is spending more on clean energy than any other nation (in case you couldn’t tell from the figures above), yet solar and wind have only generated 14 % of the country’s energy in 2024. A recent Yale Environment 360 report says fossil fuels now make up less than half of China’s total installed generation capacity; just a decade ago, it was two-thirds.

The Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) produces a tool called the Air Quality Life Index (AQLI), which tracks total particulate pollution by country and utilizes air quality data to determine an expected increase or decrease in life expectancy, dependent on whether World Health Organization Guidelines are met.

According to AQLI, China’s fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5) has been dropping since the country announced a “war against pollution” in 2014. This decline has continued through 2021, with pollution levels down 42% compared to 2013. Due to those improvements, the average Chinese citizen can expect to live 2.2 years longer. AQLI goes as far as attributing a decline in global pollution levels directly to China’s success in dramatically reducing pollution, in line with the findings of a University of Chicago study.

Despite progress, AQLI still asserts China is the 13th-most polluted country on the planet. It notes particulate pollution in Beijing is still 40% higher than the most-polluted county in the United States (Plumas County, CA). 99.9% of China’s population lives in an area where the average particulate pollution level is in excess of WHO’s guidelines.