China, one of the world’s most ambitious countries, seems to be in trouble. Its expectations seem to have shattered because of going ahead of time with overboard achievements and goals. China’s milestone has revealed shocking results and challenges that are also transformative. These issues are related to integrating renewable energy into the national system and managing its enormous and erratic output.

An untimely achievement in renewable energy

When people talk about the right time, it applies to everything, and China seems to have missed out on this one. This is why: This 1200 GW objective was stated by Xi Jinping at the UN Climate Ambition Summit in December 2020. China’s combined solar and wind power at the time was just about 446 GW. By the conclusion of Q3 2020, the solar and wind power splits were exactly equal, at 223 GW each.

Indeed, it is a great thing for the Asian country to set these goals to achieve a green environment or green goals. However, this progress has formed an unexpectedly bad situation. The country’s grid infrastructure is unable to handle the erratic power supply due to the massive energy output. Experts claim that irregular energy production from renewable sources like wind and solar can make it difficult to balance supply and demand.

Here is a background story to give you context: China was not well-positioned to make long-term macro forecasts in 2020. The economy shrank throughout the first half of the year due to COVID. Profits for asset owners were being severely impacted by the wind/solar feed-in tariff (FiT) program’s termination, which had been the main driver of renewables growth for the past ten years.

To get bad performers off their books, many private corporations were selling off assets, and subsidies for previous years were not being paid on time. The mood of the industry was gloomy. Chinese planners got access to 1H 2020 data in addition to the full annual data for 2019. They added 30 GW of solar and 26 GW of wind in 2019, which was less than their averages for the previous few years (under the FiT program).

The storage issue: Why a worldwide solution is needed for renewable energy

Storage is the key to China’s energy problem. In spurts, renewable energy sources generate more energy than is immediately needed. If this excess energy is not properly stored, it could be wasted. To fully realise the potential of China’s renewable energy initiatives, it is now imperative to develop sophisticated energy storage technologies.

China has advanced battery technology by investing in flow and lithium-ion batteries, among other technologies. But these developments by themselves are unable to maintain the necessary scale. Due to the overwhelming amount of excess energy, worldwide cooperation is required to investigate potential solutions such as large-scale battery networks, new grid technologies, and hydrogen storage.

According to experts, renewable energy systems cannot function well without sufficient storage capacity, and China’s early success could end up being a lost opportunity rather than a triumph. This is why, besides China, many other industries and countries are working on finding solutions that can conveniently cater to renewable energy to avoid complications and losses.

In perspective from 2020, the 2030 target was unnecessarily low, but not on purpose. In my opinion, it truly demonstrated some aspirational thinking in the hazy circumstances of the era—thoughts that soon became out of date. In 2024, not only has the capacity target been met, but the generating output from these recently added renewables has at last increased to the point where it can offset all of the economy’s incremental rise in power consumption.

China’s 1200 GW renewable energy milestone highlights the country’s aspirations as well as the difficulties associated with significant energy changes. Although its green energy accomplishments are unmatched, the associated issues of energy storage, grid management, and international collaboration underscore the necessity of coordinated worldwide efforts.