China’s installed photovoltaic solar capacity stood at 43.18 gigawatts (GW) at the end of 2015, the last year of its 12th Five-Year Plan. That statistic marks the first time that China has overtaken Germany to top the world in photovoltaic capacity. This is another important accomplishment of China’s new energy sector, after becoming the country with the most installed wind power capacity.

China has been accelerating its pace of construction of photovoltaic power stations since 2011, and the annual growth of photovoltaic capacity surged to about 150 percent in the first two years.

Growing an additional 41.5 percent from 2014 to 2015, China's newly-installed photovoltaic capacity reached about 15 GW in that period, accounting for 28.3 percent of newly-installed photovoltaic capacity around the world.

Photovoltaic power stations can effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In 2015, China's photovoltaic generation reached 39.2 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), which prevented 17 million tons of coal from being burnt, and 31 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

By the end of 2020 and 2030, China plans to increase photovoltaic energy generation to 200 billion kWh and 500 billion kWh respectively. Doing so would save 85 million tons of coal and 160 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2020; the numbers would increase to 210 million tons of coal and 390 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030.