China Quietly Announced It's Going on the Biggest Solar Blitz Ever

A few days ago, China quietly announced that it's unleashing the largest solar power blitz the world has ever seen.

Previously, the economic giant had planned to install enough solar panels on its soil to generate 21 gigawatts of electricity by 2015. Which is a lot—enough to power some 20 million homes. But the recession put its solar companies in debt. Then they were slapped with international trade restrictions, and then they were left sitting on a massive glut of photovoltaic panels. So China decided to double down.

In a public statement issued on July 4th but only published today, China's State Council announced that it is raising its solar production target to 35 GW. Which is pretty much mind-melting. In the US, one gigawatt is enough to provide power to 750,000-1,000,000 American resource-hog homes. A gigawatt in China will therefore go even further.

This announcement means that China is going to add 10 GW of solar capacity every year until 2015. Environmentalists went nuts when California, one of the nation's solar-friendliest states, hit the one gigawatt milestone. If all goes according to plan, China will install that much in August.

But let's back up. For some context on how unprecedented this plan is, how supremely audacious it is, consider this: as of 2006, the total energy demand for the entire United Kingdom was 40 GW. China will nearly be able to meet that with solar alone in just two and a half years.

Think about that for a second—if China meets its goal, it will be able to power the world's sixth-biggest economy with clean solar energy alone. And it will have built the vast majority of those power plants in just three years.

All this is great news for China's domestic solar industry, which was the largest in the world before the global economic slump. The Wall Street Journal notes that Chinese solar companies have been "hit by falling prices of solar equipment, fierce competition and a slowdown in financing for solar projects in Europe and the U.S., both of which have been among China’s largest customers."

That, and both the U.S. and the European Union slapped tariffs on Chinese panel imports, taking away their biggest advantage—they were cheap.

The State Council acknowledges the setbacks and challenges, and it's pretty clear that the move is designed to re-stimulate the domestic industry and relieve the oversupply of panels. If they can't sell them cheaply abroad, they'll just install them at home. So it also means China will become the world leader in solar deployment.

Until now, Germany had snagged the top honors in the solar-blitzing game: it topped out at 7 GW installed in 2010. And its solar programs were deemed ultra-ambitious, even revolutionary. Now, it's beginning to slow down its solar incentive program—but it still couldn't match China's massive plans even at its apex. The US, meanwhile, despite having a banner solar year—it's projected to hit 4,400 MW of installed solar— is nowhere near China's ambitious level of installation.

Of course, there are reasons to be skeptical. China's figures all come directly from the state—no independent watchdogs will be guaging how well the program is rolled out—and only time will tell if it can effectively and efficiently deploy that much solar power. Still, it's a gargantuan amount of clean power, and the most ambitious solar marathon ever attempted. And for that it deserves a towering heap of clean energy credit.