Beijing lifts renewable subsidy for 2021

China’s Ministry of Finance said that it had set the country’s renewable power subsidy for 2021 at 5.95 billion yuan ($905.7 million), up 4.9 percent from this year, thanks to a big increase in the allocation to solar projects.

The subsidy will go to wind farms, biomass power generators and distributed solar power operators, as well as solar power projects for poverty alleviation purposes, in 14 Chinese regions, according to a statement from the ministry’s Central Budget and Final Accounts Public Platform.

China, the world’s biggest energy consumer, had slashed the subsidy in 2020 from the previous year by about 30 percent as it aimed to stop funding large producers of electricity from renewable sources

to make them compete with coalfired utilities and achieve gridprice 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.

Wind farm operators and biomass generators did see their overall subsidy for 2021 drop by 24.3 percent and 18.5 percent yearon-year, respectively, to 2.31 billion yuan and 59.78 million yuan. But total subsidies for solar projects have been set at 3.38 billion yuan, up 56.8 percent from this year, with the lion’s share being allocated to China’s Inner Mongolia region. China aims to peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon-neutrality before 2060.