China's carbon emissions set to decline years earlier than expected

China's massive rollout of energy is renewably accelerating, its investments in the sector growing so large that international climate watchdogs now expect the country's greenhouse gas emissions to peak years earlier than anticipated-possibly as soon as this year.

- Sha Hua

China installed 217 gigawatts worth of solar power last year alone, a 55% increase, according to new government data.

That is more than 500 million solar panels and well above the total installed solar capacity of the U.S. They appeared everywhere from the deserts of Inner Mongolia to the mountains of southwest China to rooftops across the country, including on the Great Hall of the People on the edge of Tiananmen Square.

Wind energy installation additions were 76 gigawatts last year, more than the rest of the world combined. That amounted to more than 20,000 new turbines across the country, including the world's largest, planted on towers in the sea off China's east coast.

The low-carbon capacity additions, which also included hydropower and nuclear, were for the first time large enough that their power output could cover the entire annual increase in Chinese electricity demand, analysts say. The dynamic suggests that coalfired generation which accounts for 70% of overall emissions for the world's biggest polluter-is set to decline in the years to come, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency and Lauri Myllyvirta, the Helsinki-based lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

China's expanding renewables footprint is shaping the global response to climate change. Its companies are the leading manufacturers of clean-energy technology, from solar panels and wind turbines to electric vehicles. That is stoking concerns in the rest of the industrialized world about depending on China for their energy supplies in the future.