According to China’s Ministry of Finance, it had set the country’s renewable power subsidy for 2021 at 5.95 billion yuan ($905.7 million), up 4.9 per cent from 2020.
Reportedly, the subsidy will go to wind farms, biomass power generators and distributed solar power operators, as well as solar power projects in 14 Chinese regions. It had slashed the subsidy in 2020 from the previous year by around 30 per cent as it aimed to stop funding large producers of electricity from renewable sources to make them compete with coal-fired utilities and achieve grid-price parity. However, a surge in new capacity – amid a sharp fall in the manufacturing costs for renewable energy components – has left the finance ministry with a subsidy backlog that was expected to reach as much as 300 billion yuan by the end of this year.