CHAPTER 9
China’s Promotion of Wind and Solar Power:
Supportive Policies, Geographical Challenges
and Market Competition
Gang Chen
Introduction
China’s economic miracle over the past three decades has made the
country the world’s largest energy consumer in the world. Despite
China’s constant effort to expand and diversify energy supply, its coaldominant energy structure has put it in an awkward position in the
context of global climate change, and its dependence upon fossil fuels
is furthered by its increasing imports of petroleum and natural gas. In
the long run, energy scarcity could become a real bottleneck for China’s
sustainable development due to its voracious demand for fossil fuel energy
resources and the fact that it has per capita energy resources that are lower
than the global average.
G. Chen (B)
East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
e-mail: eaicg@nus.edu.sg
© The Author(s) 2021
P. Midford and E. Moe (eds.), New Challenges and Solutions
for Renewable Energy, International Political Economy Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54514-7_9
199