Jenko

China's electricity transition is happening at a scale human civilisation has never witnessed before. Since 2000, China's electricity generation has grown almost eightfold, reaching 10,573 TWh in 2025. Yet the electricity mix has been transformed. Renewables now account for nearly 38% of generation, compared with around 19% in 2000. Wind and solar alone generated 2,310 TWh in 2025, an increase of 474 TWh over the previous year, equivalent to 94% of new electricity demand. Clean electricity generation grew faster than demand, and fossil fuel generation actually declined by 56 TWh, the first annual decline in a decade. And the buildout continues. According to China's National Energy Administration figures released on 30 October 2026, China added another 60.66 GW of wind and approximately 110 GW of solar in the first nine months of 2026 alone. That's roughly 171 GW of new wind and solar capacity, bringing the combined installed fleet to an astonishing 2,010 GW. More importantly, actual wind and solar generation reached 1,933 TWh in those nine months, up 11% year on year. That's already equivalent to 84% of the entire 2025 total, with the final quarter still to come. Renewables accounted for 87.5% of China's increase in electricity generation during the first nine months of 2026, while wind and solar alone supplied 64% of the increase in electricity consumption. I reckon the most remarkable part isn't simply how quickly China is building renewables. It's that clean electricity is now growing fast enough to meet increasing demand and begin pushing fossil generation backwards, even as the overall electricity system continues expanding. This is an industrial and energy transformation on a scale we've never experienced before. And increasingly, it's economics driving the transition.