🇨🇳 China Warps the Renewable Energy Curve (Global Data Update)

A big update landed this week, with the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) releasing its 2024 figures on energy capacity.

The headline: a massive jump in global renewables capacity.

But China’s progress not only dwarfs everyone else’s—it masks weaker performances elsewhere.

Let’s take a look.

Why Capacity Matters

Capacity refers to the maximum potential output of energy infrastructure—such as solar panels and wind turbines—under ideal conditions. Building renewable capacity is where the rubber hits the road.

• To limit emissions, more electricity must come from renewables, not from burning fossil fuels.
• On top of that, the transition to electrification (replacing gas and oil with electricity to power our homes, transport, and industries) means we'll need more electricity than before.

Target vs. Progress

• Target: In November 2023 at COP28, 124 countries (including Australia) pledged to triple the world's installed renewable capacity to just over 11,000 Gigawatts (GW).
• Progress: The world has now installed 4,448 GW of renewable energy capacity.

That’s a massive amount of power—nearly equal to the global capacity from non-renewables.

Solar accounts for 42%, followed by hydro (29%), then wind (25%). (To select individual categories in the chart below, you can use the interactive version of this article at onlyfacts.io/newsletters).

How does our progress stack up against the target? The dotted lines below show where we’re headed if 2024’s pace continues—and where we need to be.

China's Pull

Another way to look at progress is percentage growth.

• Last year’s 585 GW addition marked a 15.1% increase—a record, which is good news.
• But it still falls short of what’s needed to stay on track. To meet the goal of tripling global renewable capacity by 2030, the world must now grow by 16.6% a year.

Global growth rate (2024): +15.1% (+585 GW)
Total capacity: 4,448 GW

China—despite not signing the COP28 pledge—is doing the lion's share of the work.

China growth rate (2024): +25.7% (+375 GW)
Total capacity: 1,878 GW

China's renewables capacity is so huge, and progress so fast, that it distorts the average. Without China, the rest of the world grew renewables capacity by 9%.

Other Countries

Let’s look at the other top performers from last year. Since percentage jumps on tiny bases can be misleading (Saint Barthélemy topped the chart with 1,835% growth by adding just 1.2 megawatts (MW)) we'll focus on countries with at least 100 GW of renewables capacity.

Top 10

1.      China: +26% (375 GW)

2.      Taiwan: +18% (3.0 GW)

3.      Greece: +18% (2.7 GW)

4.      Turkey: +17% (10 GW)

5.      Philippines: +17% (1.3 GW)

6.      India: +16% (38.6 GW)

7.      Poland: +16% (4.4 GW)

8.      Egypt: +16% (1.0 GW)

9.     Australia: +14% (8 GW)

10.    Romania: +14% (1.7 GW)

Bottom 10

Here are the countries with the lowest growth in renewables capacity in 2024. Note that some countries show MW, not GW.

1.      Ukraine: -51% (-7.5 GW)

2.      Russia: -4% (-2.1 GW)

3.      Argentina: -2% (-0.2 GW)

4.      Paraguay: 0% (+0 MW)

5.      Venezuela: 0% (+1.2 MW)

6.      Tajikistan: 0% (+0.5 MW)

7.      Thailand: 0% (+9.7 MW)

8.      North Korea: 0% (+13.6 MW)

9.      Canada: +1% (+1.6 GW)

10.    Norway: +2%: (+0.6)

A single year doesn’t tell the full story of a country’s renewables capacity—click through the links to explore the data in context.

A few other countries you might be interested in:

16. USA: +11% (43.2 GW)

17. South Korea: +11% (3.2 GW)

32. UK: +4% (2.1GW)

34. Japan: +2% (3.49)

What We’re Reading 

History Lesson 

Clear-eyed explanation of Victoria’s energy crunch and how it got here—with charts. The state faces a harder path to decarbonisation than most. For decades, its economy ran on abundant oil, gas, and cheap brown coal. Now, coal plants are closing, gas is running low, and clean alternatives aren’t arriving fast enough. One pointed recommendation: the government must clearly and consistently lay out the facts for Victorians. (The Australian Financial Review)

Airborne Research

Researchers flew sensor-equipped planes over Glencore’s Hail Creek open-cut coal mine in Queensland and tracked methane plumes downwind. Their measurements suggest emissions could be three to eight times higher than Glencore reported for FY2023. The company’s figures relied on state-wide emission factors—estimates based on coal volumes. ‘The results support phasing out these generic reporting methods in favour of more advanced, mine-specific coal gas content modelling for open-cut coal mines in Australia.’ (University of New South Wales)

5 Questions 

Bonus blurb for election campaign: five climate and environment questions that voters might reasonably want to know. How exactly will more gas lower prices—beyond the ‘high school economics’ that more supply means more competition? When and how will environmental protection laws be fixed? Where’s the evidence that gas exports are cleaner than coal? How fast will Australia cut emissions? And what’s the Coalition’s plan to steer the country toward a politically and economically sustainable low-emissions future this term? (The Guardian)

Headlines To Watch

Budget locks in green metals funding, ignores household energy opportunity (Renew Economy, 26 Mar)

Controversial bill to protect Tasmanian salmon industry passes despite environmental concerns (The Guardian, 26 Mar)

The 2025 budget has few savings and surprises but it also ignores climate change (The Conversation, 25 Mar) 

$6.8b power bill relief could have bought 500k Tesla batteries (The Australian Financial Review, 24 Mar)

Adelaide Hills water crisis: a local problem is a global wake-up call (CSIRO, 24 Mar) 

South Australia has been 'driest for a generation' (7.30, 24 Mar)

Plummeting gas demand averts looming gas crisis as AEMO dials down warning (ABC News, 20 Mar)

Data Updates

New in Electric Vehicle Sales

• We’ve now separated EVs from PHEVs—thanks to your feedback. This gives a clearer picture of each category’s share of new car sales.

Correction in Electric Vehicle Registrations

• While reviewing the data, we found an error in how we reported registrations. As with sales, we had grouped EVs and PHEVs together. But on closer inspection, it appears the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics (BITRE) classifies PHEVs under hybrids.
• Unlike sales data, we can’t separate these yet—we’ll need individual-level make and model data, which is on our roadmap.
• The correction is now clearly marked in both the dashboard and dataset. Sorry for our mistake. 

Where our electricity came from this week (NEM)

Fuel mix: Weekly average vs the same week last year

• Coal (Black): 47.3% (+3.9%)
• Coal (Brown): 14.6% (-2.3%)
• Gas: 3.1% (-0.8%)
• Solar (Rooftop): 11.9% (-0.7%)
• Solar (Utility): 6.6% (-1.6%)
• Wind: 11.6% (+2.2%)
• Hydro: 5.4% (-0.7%)

Final Thought

'If there is a 50-50 chance that something can go wrong, then 9 times out of 10 it will.'
— Paul Harvey

That's your climate data briefing. We're buckled up for the next five weeks and hope you are too! See you next time.

💛 Juliette and the OnlyFacts team