China's solar goals boggle the American mind

Via SustainableBusiness.com's newsletter -- 

China recently raised its target for the amount of solar it will install by 2015, from 10 gigawatts (GW) to 15 GW, an increase of 50%. Since the government introduced a national solar feed-in tariff (FiT) in July, and then recently raised the price it would pay for solar under the program, installations are booming. The country is expected to install over 2 GW in 2011, compared to just 500 MW in 2010.

China recently reiterated its Five Year Renewable Energy Plan, which has a target of 100 GW wind by 2015, with 5 GW of that offshore. The country had originally set 5 GW as its solar target, but doubled down after the nuclear meltdown in Japan.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects China will install 180 GW of wind and solar capacity this decade (by 2020), that's equivalent to 180 nuclear plants. Currently China has 42 GW of wind and 1 GW of solar.