With climate change becoming a real threat to the environment, countries around the globe are pushing for more environmentally friendly alternatives for harnessing electricity. China is reportedly currently leading the world in terms of solar power adoption and production.
This year, China is expected to increase its solar power production by more than seven gigawatts (GW). In 2015, China installed new solar photovoltaic facilities with a 15.13GW capacity, pushing the country's cumulative solar capacity to 43.48GW.
This year, China's cumulative solar capacity has reached 50.3GW. The country's solar photovoltaic infrastructure capacity has increased by 15-fold since 2011.
In the first three months of 2016, China installed solar photovoltaic facilities that pushed the country's solar capacity to 7.14GW. Photovoltaic power plants account for 6.17GW of this figure, while the remaining 970 megawatts are from distributed photovoltaic installations like rooftop panels.
GlobalData analyst Ankit Mathur said that China has been extensively pushing for the adoption of green energy in the country as part of its effort to shift its dependence away from traditional and harmful energy plants like coal.
According to the Wall Street Journal, China's 13th Five Year Plan targets 110GW of solar capacity by 2020. The country is also planning to shift its focus towards quality and efficiently rather than using grid-scale expansion. By 2020, China is expecting to get 15 percent of its energy requirement from non-fossil fuel and renewable energy sources.
In a statement acquired by Computer World, Mathur said, "In China, the National Development and Reform Commission has set a benchmark on the on-grid PV power tariff [reductions]. The country's solar PV sector is benefiting from growing policy and political support."
This year, global solar capacity installation is expected to increase by 70GW pushing the cumulative solar capacity of the world to 294.69GW. Next to China, Japan managed to accumulate 23.25GW of new solar capacity pushing the country's cumulative capacity to 42.41GW. The United States is expected to end the year with 40.61GW of cumulative solar capacity.