Despite having the world’s biggest network for charging electric vehicles (EVs), coupled with the largest new-energy storage capacity, China is not resting on its laurels. Fresh pledges from Beijing call for further accelerating the development of China’s new-energy system amid an increasingly aggressive push to meet carbon-neutrality targets and expedite the nation’s green-energy transition. “China has built the largest EV-charging network in the world, with two charging stations for every five vehicles, making charging more hassle-free for the people,” said Wang Hongzhi, director of the National Energy Administration (NEA), at a press conference in Beijing on Tuesday that focused on China’s achievements in energy. Meanwhile, the country has also significantly boosted renewable-energy storage through major infrastructure projects, and the proportion of power-generation capacity from renewable energy, among all energy-generation capacity, has grown over the past five years from 40 per cent to around 60 per cent, he noted. About 5.62 million new energy vehicles were registered in China during the first half of the year, official data shows, accounting for nearly half of all new vehicle registrations. That brought the total number of new-energy vehicles to 36.89 million by the end of June. On the back of the rising EV penetration, the number of EV chargers in the country has grown tenfold since the end of 2020, reaching nearly 16.7 million by the end of July, according to Du Zhongming, director of the NEA’s electricity department, who also spoke at the press conference. “Advanced manufacturing – represented by the ‘new three sectors’, including EVs – as well as digital industries such as artificial intelligence and big data, have driven rapid growth in China’s electricity demand,” Du said. He noted that electricity consumption for EV-charging and battery-swapping services grew by more than 40 per cent in the first seven months of the year. China consumed an excess of 4.84 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity in the first half of 2025, a year-on-year increase of 3.7 per cent, according to NEA data. Meanwhile, driven by wind and solar power, renewable-energy generation in China increased by 15.6 per cent in the first half of the year to 1.8 trillion kWh, exceeding the increase in total electricity consumption over the same period. “In other words, the increase in the total electricity consumption is all generated by the wind and the sun,” Du said. China has made its green-energy transition a key economic priority. President Xi Jinping announced goals in 2020 to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060. To get there, the nation included a goal for its consumption of non-fossil-fuel energy to reach 20 per cent of all consumed energy by the end of 2025. “We expect to exceed the target this year,” said Wang, noting that the share of non-fossil-fuel consumption already stood at 19.8 per cent last year, and that China now hopes to increase the share to 25 per cent by 2030. Wang added that private enterprises had become a “vital force driving energy transformation and reform”. Private enterprises account for the vast majority of solar equipment manufacturers, over 60 per cent of wind turbine manufacturers, and also hold an increasing share in nuclear power projects, Wang said. But China’s rapid expansion into green energy has also brought challenges, including excessive competition and overcapacity in key sectors such as EV and solar power, prompting Beijing to step up its efforts to combat these issues in recent months.