At the beginning of this century, China’s photovoltaic industry is still in its infancy, China’s photovoltaic products accounted for very little global market share, 20 years of the world’s photovoltaic industry landscape has undergone tremendous changes, China’s photovoltaic industry first experienced the stage of brutal growth, by 2008 China’s photovoltaic production capacity has surpassed Germany, ranking first in the world, the proportion of production capacity accounted for nearly half of the world. With the spread of the global economic crisis in 2008, Chinese photovoltaic enterprises have also been hit. Since 2011, the United States, the European Union, Japan, India and other major economies in the world have launched anti-dumping and countervailing investigations into China’s PV industry, which has fallen into a period of confusion, with domestic PV companies competing viciously and a number of Chinese PV companies suffering long-term losses and going bankrupt.
The Chinese government has supported and subsidized the PV industry for many years, and at the early stage of PV industry development, local governments offered attractive preferential policies and loan terms for PV projects when attracting investment due to performance considerations, and PV enterprises were mainly concentrated in the Yangtze River Delta region, such as Jiangsu and Zhejiang. In addition, the pollution problem caused by solar panel production has triggered massive protests by residents.
China’s State Council introduced a subsidy policy for PV power generation in 2013, and China’s installed PV capacity surged from 19 million kilowatts in 2013 to about 310 million kilowatts in 2021. The Chinese government began phasing out subsidies for PV and wind power starting in 2021.
Due to the incentives introduced by the Chinese government and technological innovations in the PV industry, the average cost of global PV manufacturing has fallen by 80% in a decade, which has led to exponential growth in PV manufacturing capacity, and China has an absolute price advantage in PV module production costs, which are 35% lower than Europe, 20% lower than the US, and even 10% lower than India.
The US, EU and China have all set targets on controlling warming and increasing the use of renewable energy until carbon neutrality is achieved. The Biden administration intends to expand the use of solar energy in order to start achieving the goal of reducing carbon emissions. The U.S. government has set a goal of zero emissions by 2035, when all U.S. electricity will be provided by solar, wind and nuclear power. The European Union in 2020 renewable energy generation for the first time more than fossil fuels, the EU will further increase the market share of renewable energy, solar and wind energy is the main goal. The European Commission proposes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. China proposes that by 2030, the proportion of non-fossil energy in primary energy consumption will reach about 25%, the total installed capacity of wind and solar power will reach more than 1.2 billion kilowatts, and carbon neutrality will be achieved by 2060.
Post time: Oct-14-2022