A recent report from the UK energy research institute Carbon Brief indicates that in 2025, over one-third of China’s economic growth was driven by solar energy, electric vehicles, and other clean energy technologies. Meanwhile, these economic sectors contributed to more than 90% of the growth in investment.
Last year, China’s clean energy industry generated an output value of 15.4 trillion yuan (2.1 trillion USD), accounting for approximately 11.4% of China’s gross domestic product (GDP), comparable to the economic scale of Brazil or Canada.
This report analyzes the clean energy industry based on official data, industry data, and analyst reports. Between 2022 and 2025, the actual value of China’s clean energy industry nearly doubled. The report points out that if China’s clean energy industry were regarded as a country, its economic scale would rank eighth in the world.
The study also found that without the clean energy industry, China would not have achieved its GDP growth target of around 5% last year, and GDP growth would have been only 3.5%.
Additionally, the expansion of the clean energy industry far outpaces the overall growth of China’s economy, with its annual growth rate accelerating from 12% in 2024 to 18% in 2025.
Electric vehicles, batteries, and solar energy—the “big three”—continue to dominate the economic contributions of China’s clean energy industry, generating two-thirds of the economic benefits and attracting more than half of the investment in this sector.
In 2025, China’s investment in clean energy reached 7.2 trillion yuan (approximately 1 trillion USD), about four times the investment in fossil fuel extraction and coal-fired power generation (260 billion USD), although the latter remains significant.
While China’s exports of clean energy technologies grew rapidly last year, the domestic market remains far more valuable for Chinese enterprises than the export market.
How Clean Is Solar Power?
The report notes that China’s continuous investment of hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy manufacturing represents a significant economic and financial bet on the ongoing global energy transition.
Over the past five years, the clean energy industry has played a crucial role in achieving China’s economic goals. It is estimated to have contributed 40%, 25%, and 37% of GDP growth in 2023, 2024, and 2025, respectively.
However, the development prospects for the next year and the longer term remain uncertain, particularly in the solar power sector. New pricing mechanisms for renewable energy have led to a short-term slowdown in growth and brought significant uncertainty. At the same time, the targets set by the Beijing government for new clean electricity generation are notably lower than the current levels.
In the second half of last year, investment in solar power and solar manufacturing declined, while investment in power generation as a whole continued to grow for the year. This indicates that under the current electricity market mechanism, which favors coal-fired power, the clean energy industry faces certain risks.
Nevertheless, the critical role of clean energy in the economy provides strong motivation to sustain the clean energy boom. The report suggests that a slowdown in China’s domestic market could also undermine efforts to curb overcapacity and exacerbate trade tensions by increasing pressure to absorb supply through exports.
