China has built so many wind turbines it's had to switch off a lot of them every day because the grid can't handle all the electricity being produced by wind farms and coal-fired power stations combined.

China is clearly the world's biggest producer of wind energy thanks to a massive binge that saw it build two wind turbines every hour over the past few years, said the International Energy Agency (IEA). IEA said China installed more than 30,000 megawatts of new wind energy in 2015.

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The pace of wind turbine building diminished in 2016, so China only built one wind turbine per hour.

IEA also said China has constructed so many coal-fired generating plants it's had to switch-off its wind turbines for 15% of the time to prevent too much power entering its electricity grid. China also gives priority to coal-fired power stations in access to the grid.

IEA revealed China has now a clear over-supply of wind energy. In Gansu province, 39% of wind energy had to be turned-off because there isn't enough capacity on the grid.

IEA believes this situation is clearly unsustainable. To remedy this problem, China will need strong policy decisions, including the construction of more grid lines and a phase-out policy for older, more inefficient coal power plants. China also needs to undertake electricity market reform so it can more efficiently integrate renewable energy into its grid dominated by power from dirty coal-fired plants.

China plans to impose a moratorium on the construction of new coal-fired plants until 2018. This to head of an expanding "coal bubble" that is seeing China with more coal-fired power plants than it needs.

Despite this bubble, China still builds one power station every week.

Analysts said this obstinacy complicates the transition to clean energy because owners of renewable energy plants are frustrated since they can't run their power stations for as long as they like so these become profitable.

Tagschina, Wind Turbines, International Energy Agency, IEA, coal-fired plants