PVTIME – Late last week, China’s Ministry of Finance revealed it had set the country’s renewable energy subsidy for 2021 at 5.95 billion yuan, up 4.9% from 2020, thanks to a big increase in the allocation to solar projects.
According to the notice issued by the ministry, total subsidies for solar projects have been set at 3.38 billion yuan, up 56.8% from 2020. Wind and biomass subsidies will decrease by 24.3% and 18.5% from 2020, respectively, to 2.31 billion yuan and 59.78 million yuan.
The subsidy will go to wind farms, biomass power generators, distributed solar power operators, and poverty alleviation solar projects in 14 provinces (including autonomous regions and municipalities) such as Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Jilin, Zhejiang, Chongqing, Hunan, Guangxi, and Xinjiang, with Inner Mongolia receiving 5.1 billion yuan alone.
When allocating subsidy funds, the notice prioritizes national photovoltaic poverty alleviation projects, distributed projects with an installed capacity of 50KW and below owned by natural persons, photovoltaic projects determined by bidding in 2019, and new projects determined by the principle of ” expenditure determined by revenue” in 2020.
In accordance with the central policy, for photovoltaic “front-runner” projects and village level photovoltaic poverty alleviation power stations approved by the state and local governments, 50% of the subsidy funds shall be guaranteed.
In 2020, China had slashed the subsidy from the previous year by around 30% as it aimed to stop funding large producers of electricity from renewable sources to make them compete with coal-fired utilities and achieve grid-price parity.