The Role of Renewable Energy Options in China’s Present and Future Energy System

China’s population has reached 1.25 billion, ranking No.1 in the world. Along with rapid economic increase during the past 20 years, there is increasing pressure on the energy industry from limited mineral energy resources and regulations for environmental protection regulations. The development and utilization of renewable energy is becoming one important option to realize sustainable development of the energy system. This paper firstly introduces current status of renewable energy development in China. Although renewable technologies have failed to emerge as a prominent component of the China's energy mix in the past two decades, the development of renewable energy is expected to reach expectations of 87.50 Mtce, 4.2% in 2015's energy mix of China. The formulation of industrial and market scale renewable energy will lay a solid foundation for realizing the target of a share of 5% in 2020’s energy mix. In the paper, the authors also focus on the institutional problems blocking the development of renewable energy technologies, and try to put forward some policy recommendations so as to put into force renewable energy development strategy.