China Unveils Massive Clean Energy Bases in New Five-Year Plan
Published · Updated · 5 min read
China’s latest draft five-year plan reveals an ambitious expansion of gigantic clean energy bases, adding a new focus on southwestern provinces to complement its sprawling desert installations in the northwest, reflecting themes outlined in the CBBC policy briefing on China’s upcoming Five-Year Plan.
The plan, released last week, targets over 450 gigawatts of power from desert bases by 2030 and aims for 3,600 gigawatts of total wind and solar capacity by 2035.
Desert Giants Meet Hydropower Integration
The northwestern strategy centers on the Gobi Desert and Inner Mongolia, where some of Asia’s highest solar radiation levels combine with strong, steady winds. These regions receive over 2,000 kilowatt hours per square meter annually, creating ideal conditions for massive renewable installations.
A single large desert energy base can power several million homes. China is planning dozens simultaneously.
The 15th Five-Year Plan introduces a significant shift by emphasizing southwestern provinces, particularly Sichuan. The approach integrates solar and wind power with existing hydropower infrastructure into what planners call “integrated hydro-wind-solar complexes.”
Solving the Intermittency Challenge
Sichuan province already operates over 90 gigawatts of hydropower capacity, accounting for more than 25 percent of China’s national total. The province has rapidly expanded solar capacity to 10 gigawatts by 2023, with wind farms adding another 8 gigawatts.
Hydropower acts as a natural battery in this system. It can rapidly adjust output to balance fluctuations from wind and solar, addressing a critical weakness that pure desert-based systems face.
Renewable energy now constitutes 70 percent of Sichuan’s total energy consumption, demonstrating how the integration model maintains reliable power supply while reducing fossil fuel dependence.
Building the Power Superhighway
The massive generation capacity requires unprecedented transmission infrastructure. China plans to commission 15 new ultra-high-voltage transmission lines between 2026 and 2030.
These lines will enable around 200 gigawatt-hours per year of renewable power to connect to the grid, boosting cross-provincial electricity transmission capacity by 35 percent.
Inner Mongolia alone plans 12 ultra-high-voltage power transmission projects during this period, with combined transmission capacity of 48 million kilowatts. Historical curtailment problems, where some provinces lost around 40 percent of wind power capacity in 2016, drove this infrastructure focus.
State Grid Corporation of China announced plans to invest 4 trillion yuan ($554 billion) during the five-year period, a 40 percent increase from the previous cycle.
Storage Breakthrough at Industrial Scale
Energy storage deployment has exploded to support renewable integration. By the end of 2025, China’s cumulative installed capacity of new energy storage reached 144.7 gigawatts, representing an 85 percent year-on-year increase.
In December 2025 alone, China installed 18 gigawatts of large-scale battery storage. That exceeds all the battery storage the United States installed over an entire year.
Chinese manufacturers now boost global shipments of lithium-ion cells for storage by around 75 percent. Battery system exports were valued at over $65 billion in the first ten months of 2025.
The Fengning Pumped Storage Power Station in Hebei Province, the world’s largest facility of its kind, recently reached full operations with a total investment of 19.24 billion yuan ($2.6 billion). The facility provides long-duration storage that complements short-term battery systems.
Economic Engine Reshaping Growth
Clean energy industries generated a record 15.4 trillion yuan ($2.1 trillion) in economic output in 2025, equivalent to 11.4 percent of China’s GDP. If treated as a separate country, this would rank as the world’s eighth-largest economy.
Clean energy technologies drove more than one-third of China’s economic growth in 2025, exceeding the contribution from real estate. Without these sectors, China would have expanded by 3.5 percent rather than its reported 5 percent growth.
The manufacturing dominance extends globally. China manufactured 92 percent of the world’s solar modules and 82 percent of wind turbines as of 2024.
Chinese solar panel prices have fallen approximately 80 percent over the past decade. The average cost of electricity from solar panels dropped to 4 cents per kilowatt hour, possibly the cheapest form of energy humanity has ever produced.
Strategic Security Through Energy Independence
Energy security drives the massive construction program. China’s reliance on imports for more than 70 percent of oil consumption and 40 percent of natural gas consumption represents a critical vulnerability.
The country’s energy self-sufficiency already surpassed 85 percent by the end of 2024. The trajectory aims toward 100 percent autonomy by 2060.
Every terawatt-hour generated domestically reduces dependence on foreign tankers navigating contested sea lanes. This strategic reframing presents climate goals as vehicles for achieving strategic invulnerability.
China Southern Power Grid’s west-to-east transmission volume reached a record 261.6 billion kilowatt-hours in 2025, demonstrating how renewable energy supports integration of the internal market.
Market Reforms and Pricing Pressure
The plan introduces market-based approaches to pricing newly installed renewable projects, shifting from guaranteed fixed prices. Initial auction results in Shandong province showed winning bids of 0.319 yuan per kilowatt-hour for wind and 0.225 yuan per kilowatt-hour for solar.
These prices fall below levels thought necessary to finance projects profitably. However, complementary policies require cement, polysilicon, and steel manufacturers plus certain data centers to use renewable power for defined portions of consumption.
Despite pricing uncertainties, new renewable additions already surpassed government expectations in 2025. The National Energy Administration reported around 310 gigawatts of new renewable capacity in just the first three quarters of the year.
Path to 2035 and Beyond
Updated climate commitments submitted in September 2025 target 3,600 gigawatts of wind and solar capacity by 2035, six times the 2020 level. This represents approximately 200 gigawatts of annual installations.
For the first time, China included absolute economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions reduction, committing to reduce net emissions by 7-10 percent from peak levels by 2035.
Analysis suggests China’s emissions may already have peaked, with data showing flat or declining emissions for 21 months through mid-2025. The rapid renewable deployment is outpacing electricity demand growth.
The International Energy Agency projects China will reach its 2035 target five years ahead of schedule. Under baseline assumptions, capacity could reach 4,000-4,500 gigawatts by 2040, aligning with the IEA energy-sector roadmap to carbon neutrality in China.
The scale distinguishes China’s approach from other nations. In 2025 alone, China added more than 430 gigawatts of new wind and solar capacity, more than six times expected United States additions.
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