China’s clean power energising economy, adding a Brazil’s worth of GDP: report
Clean energy industries drove more than one-third of China’s economic growth in 2025, as they continue to expand rapidly, study finds
Clean energy technologies – led by solar power and electric vehicles – drove more than one-third of China’s economic growth last year and over 90 per cent of the rise in investment, according to a new study.
China’s clean energy industries generated a record 15.4 trillion yuan (US$2.1 trillion) in economic output in 2025, equivalent to 11.4 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) found.
If they were a country, the Chinese industries would now rank as the world’s eighth-largest economy, with an output rivalling the GDP of a nation such as Canada or Brazil, the Helsinki-based think tank said in the report released on Thursday.
Clean energy industries are expanding far faster than the broader economy in China, the report found, with annual growth accelerating from 12 per cent in 2024 to 18 per cent in 2025. Between 2022 and last year, the real economic value of China’s clean energy sector nearly doubled.
The main drivers of that expansion have been China’s “new three” industries – electric vehicles, batteries and solar power – which together generated two-thirds of the sector’s value added and attracted more than half of total clean energy investment, according to the CREA.
China’s investment in clean energy has now surged far beyond spending on fossil fuels and coal power. In 2025, clean energy investment reached 7.2 trillion yuan (US$1 trillion), nearly four times the US$260 billion directed towards fossil fuel extraction and coal power, the report said.
While exports of clean energy technologies rose sharply last year, the domestic market remains far larger than the overseas market in value for Chinese firms.