A new report reveals China’s domination of a number of green technology markets helped drive global capacity.

The nation led the world for annual capacity additions in solar, biopower, small hydropower and onshore wind in 2015.

That’s despite the National Development Reform Commission confirming reductions to China’s onshore wind Feed-in Tariffs for projects approved after January last year, the report states.

Ankit Mathur, GlobalData’s Practice Head for Power at GlobalData said: “China became the largest consumer of solar photovoltaic (PV) modules in 2014, overtaking both Japan and the US. China’s annual solar PV installations have grown rapidly over the past few years, from 500MW in 2010 to 10.6GW in 2014 and an estimated 18.43GW in 2015.

“In 2014, Japan and the US stood second and third, with annual solar PV installations of about 10GW and 6.2GW, respectively. However, both countries added an estimated 8.2GW each in 2015.”

The report adds that while the major markets of Europe and North America have historically had the best renewable track record, developing markets such as China “have shown commitment to increasing their installed renewable capacity”, driven by an increasingly global emphasis on climate policies.

China is said to have surpassed its solar target of installing 17.8GW by 2015. It has also set an ambitious goal of 150GW of capacity by the end of the decade.

The Energy Live News