Workers perform routine maintenance on wind turbines at the Rudong H4 offshore wind farm in Rudong county, Jiangsu province, on June 10. China has made steady progress in its green and low-carbon transition over the past few years. [XU CONGJUN/XINHUA]

China has firmly solidified its position as the world's largest manufacturer of clean energy equipment, supplying approximately 70 percent of the global market for wind power equipment and 80 percent for solar photovoltaic modules, according to a newly released industry report.

The Report on China Energy Development 2026, published recently by the China Electric Power Planning and Engineering Institute, underscored how the country has continuously fortified its energy security while making steady, historic progress in its green and low-carbon transition over the past few years.

Driven by a more abundant and diversified domestic energy supply, China saw a landmark achievement in 2025, with the nation's combined installed capacity for wind and solar power exceeding that of coal-fired thermal power for the first time in history.

Furthermore, relying on its robust clean energy industrial advantages, China has deepened international energy cooperation, substantially lowering the economic threshold for the global energy transition, the report said.

In 2025, China's energy supply capacity improved significantly, playing a crucial role in enhancing the resilience of national energy security, according to the National Energy Administration.

China remains the world's largest energy producer, accounting for over one-fifth of global energy production and roughly one-third of global power generation, the administration said.

In 2025, the country's total primary energy production reached 5.13 billion metric tons of standard coal, representing a 3.6 percent year-on-year increase. As of the end of 2025, the nation's cumulative installed power generation capacity surged by 16.1 percent year-on-year to reach 3.89 billion kilowatts, the report said.

Despite the rapid expansion of renewables, traditional energy sources have continued to play a stabilizing role. Coal production capacity remained reasonably abundant, with output reaching 4.85 billion tons last year, a 1.4 percent increase from the previous year.

The oil and gas sector also saw steady output increases, with crude oil production reaching 216 million tons and natural gas output hitting 262.06 billion cubic meters — marking the ninth consecutive year that natural gas production has grown by more than 10 billion cu m.

Su Xinyi, vice-president of the EPPEI's clean energy research institute, said China has further consolidated a diversified energy guarantee system in recent years.

By steadily advancing the construction of major overseas oil and gas cooperation zones across Central Asia, Russia, the Middle East, Africa, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific, China has expanded its crude oil import sources to around 40 countries.

At the same time, the domestic energy structure has experienced profound optimization. In 2025, the share of coal in China's total energy consumption dropped to 51.4 percent, down 1.8 percentage points from the previous year. Conversely, the consumption share of clean energy — encompassing natural gas, hydropower, nuclear, wind and solar — climbed 1.8 percentage points to 30.4 percent.

Renewable energy now forms the undisputed backbone of China's power grid. Accounting for over 60 percent of the nation's total installed power capacity, renewables have become the dominant force.

The combined installed capacity of wind and solar power reached a staggering 1.84 billion kW, officially surpassing thermal power to secure the top spot globally. Newly added electricity generation from wind, solar and biomass sources accounted for more than 90 percent of the total new electricity consumption across the country last year.

The China Electricity Council recently said that despite broader macroeconomic adjustments, China's overall electricity demand continues to rise robustly, driven heavily by advanced manufacturing, emerging high-tech sectors and widespread electrification.

This structural shift in electricity consumption mirrors the nation's broader industrial upgrading, the CEC said.

With China rapidly building a new power system dominated by renewable energy, this green power generation trend is expected to drastically reduce the power sector's overall carbon emissions, said Liu Zhiqiang, deputy director of the CEC's planning and development department.

China's massive domestic market has strengthened its solar supply chain and created economies of scale that accelerate technological innovation. As a result, the country has cemented its position as the global leader in solar manufacturing, engineering and technical standards, Liu said, adding that energy efficiency and technological innovation have also kept pace with this structural shift.

State Grid workers inspect photovoltaic power generation equipment at a solar power station in Xishui county, Hubei province, on Oct 10. [WANG JIANG/FOR CHINA DAILY]

The report also detailed multiple technological breakthroughs.

In the realm of long-duration energy storage, large-scale vanadium flow battery stations have entered operation, and the efficiency of compressed air energy storage systems has surpassed 70 percent.

New business models such as virtual power plants and distributed energy have mushroomed. The number of electric vehicle charging infrastructure units reached 20.09 million in 2025, an increase of almost 50 percent year-on-year.

Beyond its borders, China's unparalleled manufacturing scale has been a boon to global decarbonization, coupled with expansive direct investments. In traditional and new energy cooperation alike, China has maintained a dual-wheel drive approach.

Figures released by the EPPEI reveal that over the past decade, Chinese overseas investments in thermal power exceeded 60 million kW of capacity with a total investment of over $30 billion.

From 2022 to 2025, China participated in more than 500 overseas new energy projects across 140 countries and regions, boasting an overseas solar photovoltaic capacity of over 100 million kW and wind power capacity of over 30 million kW, the EPPEI said.

Crucially, the country's cumulative solar PV module exports have exceeded $180 billion, covering more than 200 countries and regions with an overseas installed capacity of over 1.2 billion kW.

Chinese solar technology giant Longi recently signed a landmark agreement with Romanian developer Enexus for 50 megawatt-hours of liquid-cooled battery energy storage systems.

The deal, marking one of Longi's largest storage deployments in Europe, builds upon more than 200 megawatts of the company's solar modules deployed across Enexus projects since 2025. It underscores a strategic shift for Chinese enterprises: moving from traditional module supply to providing comprehensive, utility-scale technology collaborations.

"The next phase of the global energy transition demands a total departure from fragmented, multivendor systems," said Dennis She, vice-president of Longi and president of Longi Energy Storage.

As Romania pushes to add approximately 5.8 gigawatts of ground-mounted solar capacity by 2030, these integrated systems will allow local grids to shift surplus daytime electricity to peak demand periods. By mitigating solar variability and reducing power curtailment, the Chinese-supplied hybrid infrastructure directly bolsters the resilience of Romania's evolving power network.

Meanwhile, the energy landscape is undergoing another seismic shift, driven by the explosive growth of artificial intelligence.

The report noted that AI and the energy sector are increasingly converging, with energy systems becoming a critical testbed for AI applications, while at the same time, the massive power demands of AI computing are reshaping energy infrastructure planning.

"The focus of AI development is shifting from foundational model breakthroughs to large-scale applications and actual value creation," said Li Zhenjie, deputy chief engineer of the energy science and technology innovation research institute at the EPPEI.

"With its long production chain, rich specialized scenarios and deep data accumulation, alongside high requirements for safety, reliability and real-time decision-making, the energy industry is becoming a vital arena for AI."

The NEA released the first batch of 51 high-value "AI + Energy" scenarios in May, covering eight major areas including power grids, new energy and emerging business models. Energy enterprises are now rapidly deploying specialized large language models to optimize operations.

For instance, AI is being utilized in the hydro-wind-solar integrated management of the Yalong River basin. By coupling Huawei's Pangu weather model with local meteorological and hydrological data, operators have significantly improved power generation forecasting accuracy, overcoming traditional difficulties in modeling complex weather patterns over high-altitude regions.

In thermal power, AI is assisting in dynamic combustion optimization and flexible peaking adjustments, allowing legacy coal plants to respond in seconds to balance the grid when intermittent solar and wind power fluctuates.

In new business models, AI acts as a crucial key to breaking bottlenecks in resource aggregation and process optimization.

Through precise algorithms, AI enables the smart control of virtual power plants, intelligent optimization of green hydrogen production processes, smart carbon reduction in industrial parks and the collaborative scheduling of new-type energy storage systems, said Li.

Yet, as AI optimizes the grid, it also demands vast amounts of electricity, he said.

China's intelligent computing infrastructure is in a rapid expansion phase. By the end of June, the nation's intelligent computing scale marked a 177 percent year-on-year surge, with 52 mega-clusters comprising tens of thousands of graphics processing units already built.

This computational boom has translated directly into new power loads. In 2025, China's computing centers consumed 170 billion kWh of electricity, accounting for 1.6 percent of the total societal power consumption. By 2030, nationwide electricity consumption for computing power is projected to skyrocket to 800 billion kWh, claiming roughly 6 percent of national electricity usage, Li said.

"Future global competition in AI will not merely be a contest of computing scale or algorithmic efficiency; it will increasingly depend on the ability to acquire large-scale power in a low-carbon, highly economical and sustainable manner," he said.

According to Li, this immense, stable green energy capacity provides a critical advantage for China's expanding computing centers, allowing them to meet surging electricity demands without derailing national carbon reduction goals.

"Energy is no longer just the bedrock for AI, and AI is no longer merely a tool for the energy sector," he said. "The two are moving from mutual support toward deep coupling, interacting through real-time data, dispatch mechanisms and operational workflows to forge a unified, intelligent and green infrastructure for the future."

zhengxin@chinadaily.com.cn