China looks to further boost its renewable targets

China's latest policy sets higher renewable capacity targets through to 2020. Total planned capacity build and potential growth outside the plan now add up to 240 GW for solar and 290 GW for wind by 2020. The policy also highlights measures to promote generation, cut curtailments, and improve financial support for renewables. China is keen to promote renewables, which would make up one-fourth of power capacity by 2020. We believe the solar capacity boom is likely to continue, driven by falling costs, ramping down of feed-in tariffs and rapid growth of distributed projects. More solar projects will be built in eastern and central provinces. But wind capacity could slow before the curtailments issue improves in northern provinces. Coal power may further lose its share in the generation mix to renewables, with lower utilisation hours and less capacity being built.