Don’t Let Shein Be the Model for China’s Solar Power Boom
Beijing’s formidable solar supply chain may help decarbonize the world, but it’s falling short at home.
A missed opportunity.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/BloombergThe world’s largest solar power market continues to go from strength to strength. Far from slowing down amid the Covid-19 pandemic last year, China’s installations of renewable power grew by 87 gigawatts. That’s equivalent to adding all the solar panels ever installed in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK — in a single year. More than a third of the world’s photovoltaic capacity is in China, a larger total than in Europe and the US put together.
That sounds like good news, especially given the way that China also accounts for a third of the world’s emissions. But there’s a problem with those hectares upon hectares of blue silicon. For all the size of China’s solar sector, it’s curiously lacking in strength.