GreenergyDaily

Mar. 6, 2026

China has refrained from setting ambitious goals for solar energy in its latest five-year plan.

The plan released Thursday at the annual National People's Congress stopped short of giving a target for solar installations by 2030, in contrast to the goal of doubling offshore wind power capacity over the period and targets for nuclear and pumped hydro.

Solar's mentions in the plan were also few and far between. Instead, the government placed greater emphasis on other initiatives that support the energy transition, such as zero-carbon industrial parks.

The downplaying of solar's role follows a record-breaking expansion. China's solar power generation overtook wind for the first time last year, driven by a boom in cheap panels that has made it a highly competitive power source.

But the rapid increase in solar's share of the electricity mix is straining the grid, forcing more curtailments and hurting returns for developers.

China is now confronting a different set of challenges to the power network and the wider industrial economy.

"As renewables reach higher shares in the power mix, the focus naturally shifts toward system integration," said Muyi Yang, a senior energy analyst at think tank Ember. That redirects attention to grid expansion and flexibility, energy storage, and other means of balancing variable power generation, like pumped hydro, he said.

Expanding clean power in the broader industrial economy also requires a much bigger structural change to systems and processes that have historically been designed around fossil fuels.

"That's where you start to see more explicit policy attention and new initiatives emerging like the zero-carbon industrial park initiative," said Yang.