China’s clean power energising economy, adding a Brazil’s worth of GDP: report

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.“Without clean energy sectors, China would have missed its target for GDP growth of ‘around 5 per cent’, expanding by 3.5 per cent in 2025 instead of the reported 5.0 per cent,” the CREA said.The figures reflected China’s “gigantic economic and financial bet” on the global energy transition, the report said, as Beijing strives to meet its dual carbon goals of hitting peak emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060.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.