Power grid investments fuel China's green energy transformation

As China continues to expand its energy network, its power supply infrastructure has scaled to become the largest in the world, according to newly released report by the National Energy Administration (NEA).

China's total electricity consumption crossed the 10-trillion-kilowatt-hour threshold in 2025, reaching 10.37 trillion kWh, according to the recently released China Power Supply Development Report 2026.

To sustain this massive demand, China has aggressively stepped up its power grid investments while systematically optimizing its structural network.

In 2025, total national investment in power grids reached 639.5 billion yuan ($88.3 billion). Notably, more than half of this funding was channeled directly into reinforcing and upgrading distribution networks at or below 110 kilovolts, effectively patching up weak links in rural and isolated border regions.

The structural layout of the national grid has reached a new level of sophistication, with the total length of transmission lines rating at 220 kV and above surpassing 1 million kilometers. An extensive cross-regional network of 24 DC and 21 AC UHV channels is also spanning across the country, it said.

According to the NEA, the robust physical grid is serving as the primary driver for an accelerated green transformation in China's energy consumption structure. Electricity now constitutes roughly 30 percent of the nation's total terminal energy consumption, exceeding the global average.

Backed by the world's largest renewable energy generation capacity, green power accounted for 38.5 percent of total social electricity consumption in 2025 — an increase of nearly 9 percentage points compared to the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20).

Today, nearly four out of every 10 kilowatt-hours consumed in China are generated from clean, renewable sources, it said.

Zhengxin@chinadaily.com.cn