The National Energy Administration (NEA) of China has been inundated with interest from all various provinces for their counties to be included in a pilot program to promote the use of rooftop solar. It has now released a list of 676 pilot counties from 31 provinces to be included in the scheme.
Most of the applications were received from Shandong, Henan and Jiangsu provinces, according to a report by the Bloomberg that counts it as representing nearly 30% of the total. The report quoted Jiangsu solar association's head Zhang Guoxing as estimating over 130 GW of rooftop solar power potential for the province.
LONGi Green Energy Technology is also one likely beneficiary of the scheme, as per Daiwa Capital Markets analyst Dennis Ip, added Bloomberg report.
These counties have been selected in response to a call by the NEA in June 2021 for cities and counties to participate in the pilot rooftop solar scheme. It specifically proposed to have 50% of all rooftop space of party and government buildings to be covered with solar PV generation, and 40% of total roof area of schools, hospitals, village committees and public buildings.
For industrial and commercial spaces, 30% of all rooftop PV space and for rural households 20% of rooftop space could be covered with solar. Under the pilot scheme, all such projects should be commissioned by the end of 2023.
The list of pilot counties as included by the NEA is available on its website.
While the capacity it would bring online is not clear, one can safely assume it would be somewhere in the higher double digit or even 3 digit GW level. It would be a great help for the country as it makes efforts to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060 (see China Declares Carbon Neutrality Goal By 2060).
A BloombergNEF and Schneider Electric study on rooftop solar potential of the world sees China, the US and India as the leading markets of rooftop solar by 2050 (see Study Finds 2.2TW Global Rooftop Solar Potential).