Over the past decade, China has established itself as the global
renewable energy champion: double-digit economic growth
rates, rapidly increasing energy demand and the establishment
of the largest wind industry globally. Between 2004 and 2010
China managed to double each year its newly installed capacity
for wind, achieving an average annual market growth of well
above 15,000 MW. Increased air quality problems due to the
large expansion of the coal industry over the same time period
drove even a faster deployment of renewable energies. In addition
to wind, China has the largest expansion of hydropower in
the world. During the second half of the past decade, solar PV
production capacities were developed and which in 2013 represented
well over half of the world’s production capacities for solar
PV and about one third of the global annual PV market.