At a national conference on ecological and environmental protection held in July 2023, Chinese President Xi Jinping has stressed efforts to promote the building of a Beautiful China in all.
Most of that rooftop solar has been added in the past two years, as China offered support for local governments to boost installations, and raised power rates to businesses, making generating their own electricity more attractive.
The country's rapid development of rooftop solar capacity is also driven by government incentives. Newly added annual installed capacity for solar stations has been around 30 GW on average over the past few years, China New Energy Investment and Financing Alliance said.
Fishman, an energy analyst at the Lantau Group, an economic consultancy firm in Shanghai, was keen to meet with developers in Shandong to understand how China is developing extensive rooftop solar installations at such a remarkable pace.
Will Chinese rooftop solar panels make China a record-setting year?
A major push to install rooftop solar panels on Chinese buildings is putting the nation on track for another record-setting year on renewable energy.
Rooftop installations in China increased to 27.3 gigawatts in 2021 from 19.4 GW in 2017, and the growth should keep rising for the rooftop solar market, a Rystad Energy analysis piece said. Before 2017, rooftop solar was almost non-existent, with only 4 GW of installed capacity in 2016.
Is Shandong leading China's rooftop solar-development initiatives?
Shandong is leading China's rooftop solar-development initiatives, accounting for 18% of such projects across the country. As of March, the province had installed 33 gigawatts (GW) of distributed solar capacity, enough to power an estimated 18 million homes.