China could have used 23 more terawatts-hours (TWh) of clean electricity in 2025 if it had used battery storage capacity more efficiently, according to a report released today by the Ember non-governmental organization.
© Reuters
16/07/2026
by
Lusa
O in addition, the Commission considers that it is necessary to assess the impact of the measures on the Union industry.
The report indicates that China installed only in December 2025 around 18.76 gigawatts (GW) and 65.46 gigawatts-hours (GWh) of “new energy storage”, more than the total added in that year by the United States, the second largest world market. In the first quarter of 2026, the country was already approaching 150 GW capacity in lithium ion batteries.
According to Ember, this rapid expansion was driven for several years by rules that forced wind and solar power projects to incorporate storage systems.
The policy helped reduce waste of renewable energy and facilitated connection to the power grid, but also gave rise to more rigid and less market-oriented use systems.
The organization estimates that the use of batteries connected to the network doubled between 2022 and 2025. Even so, the installations associated with renewable energy projects carried out about one hundred less annual cycles than independent systems, which can be managed directly by the network and participate more flexibly in the electric market.
Only the elimination of this difference would have allowed another 9.5 TWh of renewable electricity to be moved by 2025. In an optimized scenario, with all network-connected storage capacity operating 350 cycles per year, the additional potential would amount to 23 TWh.
“China has built, in record time, the world’s largest battery storage capacity, but having batteries is not the same as using them,” said Siming Liu, TrinaSolar’s strategy manager, quoted in the report.
The analysis arises after China eliminated, in February 2025, the obligation to associate batteries with new renewable energy projects and to extend, in January 2026, the capacity remuneration mechanisms for independent systems, in a transition from one model based on administrative impositions to another more market-oriented.
The largest global greenhouse gas emitter, China raised in June the target of “new energy storage” to 300 GW by 2030 and predicts that non-fossil sources will produce half of the country’s electricity that year, as part of the goal of achieving the peak of carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060.