As global demand for electricity rises, driven in part by the rapid buildout of AI data centers, the pace of the energy transition increasingly depends on whether low-carbon power is available to meet that demand. Solar and wind energy, core technologies in the transition, have scaled rapidly in many countries over the past decade, most notably in China and the US. And yet, deployment is uneven in both nations. Some provinces and states have seen a massive ramp-up in solar and wind capacity; others have witnessed halting or stalled progress, even where the underlying resources are abundant.

This reality reveals an important but overlooked dynamic. Certainly, national energy policies are impactful, and the diverging approaches of the US and China will influence the overall trajectory of renewables in each nation in the years ahead. But the vastly different geographic concentration of solar and wind capacity across provinces and states within each country tells us that national policy is only one piece of the puzzle. Other factors also help shape how renewable buildout does or does not advance.

To understand exactly what these drivers are, we conducted an in-depth analysis of China and the US, the world’s number one and number two producers of renewable energy today. We examined 70 explanatory variables related to renewable energy scale-up, drawing on more than 100,000 data points across all 50 US states and 31 Chinese provinces from 2014 to 2024.^[1]Chinese provinces in this report refers to mainland China’s 31 province-level regions (22 provinces, five autonomous regions, and four municipalities). Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan are not included … Continue reading

What stood out most wasn’t that the business case matters for scaling renewables—it was which parts of the business case matter most. Our model pinpointed empirically the specific elements that had the greatest impact in both countries. Several are especially noteworthy:

• Cheap Land. Access to affordable land was far and away the biggest factor in both China and the US, reflecting the core role it plays in making the economics of a project work.
• Existing Solar and Wind Capacity. We observed a definite association between a strong foundation of renewable energy in a state or province and successful scaling over our study period. This finding suggests that even regions that start from a small base can create a virtuous cycle, with early investments generating momentum that attracts further investment and growth.
• A Robust Grid. Both the reliability of the grid and investment in utility infrastructure had a clear connection to renewable scaling. Nevertheless, the dynamics related to the grid—the foundational infrastructure for delivering renewable energy—were complex, differing in US states as compared to Chinese provinces.

By revealing the conditions that enable renewable energy to scale, these data-driven insights offer guidance for private- and public-sector players. Companies can use them to inform smarter decisions about where and how to deploy capital, and governments and regulators can draw on them to design policies that advance the deployment of low-carbon energy.