Despite frequent news accounts of Chinese cities choking on fossil-fueled air pollution the country's renewable energy sector continues to progress. China leads the world in photovoltaic capacity, achieving 43 gigawatts in 2016. It overtook Germany for the top spot in 2015 after increasing the solar industry's capacity at the rate of 40% per year for over a decade.
China is now racing to become the world's biggest carbon trading market. It introduced carbon trading as a pilot project last year when 120 million tons of carbon dioxide worth 3.2 billion yuan ($463 million) had already been traded. The project will be extended to the entire country this year, and this will make China the world's biggest market, Xie Zhenhua, China's special representative for climate change affairs, said.