China's cumulative installed capacity of new energy storage reached 144.7 gigawatts, an increase of 85% year-on-year.

On January 22, the CNESA DataLink 2025 Annual Energy Storage Data Release and Energy Storage International Summit & Exhibition 2026 Press Conference was held in Beijing.

Chen Haisheng, Chairman of the Zhongguancun Energy Storage Industry Technology Alliance and Director of the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, introduced that according to incomplete statistics from the CNESA DataLink global energy storage database, as of the end of December 2025, my country's cumulative installed capacity of power energy storage reached 213.3 gigawatts, an increase of 54% year-on-year. 2025 is the final year of the 14th Five-Year Plan. Compared with the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan, the market share of energy storage technologies has changed. Pumped hydro storage accounts for 31.3%, while new energy storage represented by lithium batteries has achieved leapfrog growth, with a cumulative installed capacity exceeding two-thirds. Energy storage technology is accelerating its diversification from a single technology.

Chen Haisheng also introduced that as of the end of December 2025, my country's cumulative installed capacity of new energy storage reached 144.7 gigawatts, an increase of 85% year-on-year, and 45 times that at the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan period. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the main application scenarios for new energy storage will shift from user-side to independent energy storage, while the proportion of new energy storage will remain stable.

By the end of 2025, based on the installed capacity, most provinces across the country have achieved their 14th Five-Year Plan targets for new energy storage.

Three core highlights, decoding the growth logic of energy storage

(I) Scale Exceeds Targets: By 2025, the 14th Five-Year Plan concluded with my country's new energy storage exceeding its planned targets. Cumulative installed capacity increased from 3.2GW to 144.7GW, a compound annual growth rate exceeding 100% over five years, achieving a leap from "follower" to "leader," becoming the world's fastest-growing country.

(II) Structural Optimization and Dual Upgrades in Scenarios and Technologies: Application scenarios have shifted from "user-side dominated" to "independent energy storage dominated," with independent energy storage accounting for 58%, deeply integrated into the core of the power system. The technological approach has shifted from single lithium battery to diversified parallel development, with breakthroughs in long-duration energy storage technology accelerating, increasing the average duration from 2.11 hours to 2.58 hours, demonstrating a significant trend towards longer-duration storage.

(III) Dual-Engine Development and a More Complete Ecosystem: 869 new energy storage policies were introduced in 2025, with policy and market forces driving industry development. The trading mechanism is improved, revenue models are diversified, and the demand for new energy storage is being released. The market favors the "turnkey model," and in 2025, the winning bids for energy storage systems and EPC projects surged by 140.1% and 125.5% year-on-year, respectively.