{"id":139882,"date":"2025-11-17T18:28:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T18:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/139882\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T18:28:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T18:28:11","slug":"the-year-sunlight-went-global-how-the-paris-agreement-brought-solar-power-to-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/139882\/","title":{"rendered":"The year sunlight went global: how the Paris Agreement brought solar power to the world"},"content":{"rendered":"

Backed by India\u2019s leadership, the ISA has channelled finance and expertise to emerging economies through a South\u2013South cooperation model. Its Affordable Finance at Scale program has allocated over $2 billion USD for solar projects<\/a>, while the Global Solar Facility works to de-risk private investment. Both initiatives support ISA\u2019s goal of mobilising $1 trillion in solar funding by 2030.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

China\u2019s solar surge is powering the global transition<\/p>\n

China started fostering solar installation well before the Paris Summit, through measures like a national feed-in tariff. Still, solar did not exceed 1% of China\u2019s electricity generation until 2016, a year after the world overall passed this milestone.<\/p>\n

In its initial NDC, the country committed to peaking carbon emissions around 2030 and increasing the non-fossil share in its primary energy consumption to 20%. Statements from Chinese officials after the Paris Summit confirmed that China\u2019s emission reduction commitments were a significant driver<\/a> of its solar development. In 2020, the country announced its carbon neutrality target, which further strengthened long-term market confidence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

China has become the undisputed world leader in solar generation and manufacturing, reaching its national target to install 1,200 GW of wind and solar by 2030, six years ahead of schedule, in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a result, solar generated 8.3% of China\u2019s electricity (839 TWh) in 2024, a 21-fold expansion from 0.7% (40 TWh) in 2015. Solar overtook bioenergy in 2016, gas in 2020 and nuclear in 2022 and now stands as the country\u2019s fourth largest source of electricity behind wind (9.9% in 2024), hydro (13%) and coal (58%).\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2015, the Chinese government introduced the \u2018Top Runner\u2019 programme to upgrade the quality and efficiency of solar modules, both to lower domestic deployment costs and make Chinese manufacturers more competitive globally. As solar demand surged after Paris, China\u2019s market leadership grew: in 2011, four of the top ten solar module manufacturing companies were Chinese<\/a>, by 2019 this had risen to eight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Today, China is home to 80-90% of global solar manufacturing, with exports increasing from a few gigawatts (GW) in 2015<\/a> to nearly 350 GW of panels, cells and wafers in 2024. The spectacular fall in global module prices is largely due to the scale of China\u2019s investment in production and innovation, stimulated by manufacturing policy and large-scale domestic deployment.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Backed by India\u2019s leadership, the ISA has channelled finance and expertise to emerging economies through a South\u2013South cooperation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-139882","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}