Blowing Away the Problem?: An Analysis of China’s National Energy Administration Documents in Order to Understand Wind Curtailment

In the last twenty years, China has invested immense resources in growing their renewable energy from infancy to one of the world’s most comprehensive programs. Since 2011, China has consistently been the top investor in renewable energy. In 2017, China represented 43% of the world’s investment into renewable energy or roughly $88.5 billion USD. These investments led to China becoming the country with the largest wind and solar capacity since 2012 and 2015 respectively. However, while China leads the world in terms of generation capacity for wind and solar, the country still primarily relies on coal as their energy source. In 2018, just under sixty percent of China’s energy came from coal while wind energy represented only 2.5% of the energy market. While China’s reliance on coal is multifaceted, curtailment of renewable energy exacerbates the problem as China is not utilizing the sustainable infrastructure in which it has invested