This paper examines inequality in household adoption of rooftop solar photovoltaics in rural China through a qualitative study of three villages. The Chinese government promotes distributed solar to drive low-carbon development. However, community management and China’s institutional system influence unequal access.
As shown in , since 2013, China’s newly added distributed photovoltaic installed capacity have fluctuated upward, and reached 29.28 GW by 2021, accounting for 53.4% of the total, and exceeding the centralized photovoltaic system for the first time in history.
Solar PV of China accounted for about one third (174GW) of the global total installed capacity in 2018 and contributed to 3.5% of national total power generation in 2020 .
China’s rural residential photovoltaic system has been greatly developed in recent years. However, most existing researches, are difficult to reflect the real development situation of the whole system.
Long-term development of solar PV in China 4.1.1. National development pathway As shown in the long-term simulation made by different models (Fig. 3), amount of solar power generation in 2050 ranges from 3200 to 6300 TWh (billion KWh).
With regard to technology research and development, the latest photoelectric conversion efficiency of China’s mass production of silicon solar cell has reached more than 25%, which is the world’s leading level (Chen et al. 2022). Figure 3. Global top 10 solar PV markets, 2021–2022 (source: author drawing based on solar power Europe 2023).