Solar companies cut costs and prices sharply to maintain market share. That led to a few low-cost survivors while many other competitors were driven out of business in China and around the world. The deserted blue-walled factory of Hunan Sunzone, left, which once made solar panels in Changsha, China.
Solar panel makers are cutting prices but still building factories. Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times Keith Bradsher, who has covered China’s solar industry since 2009, reported from Changsha, China. Over the past 15 years, China has come to dominate the global market for solar energy.
Solar manufacturers across China have been laying off thousands of workers to cut costs — and those workers may be the lucky ones because they qualify for months of severance pay. Other big solar companies have resorted to tactics like giving yearlong unpaid vacations or 30 percent pay cuts for employees who keep their jobs.
This allows the shipments to avoid trade barriers, like tariffs imposed on many Chinese imports by President Donald J. Trump. Several of China’s biggest solar panel manufacturers are building final assembly plants in the United States to tap subsidies offered as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.
But building an industry that can stand on its own will be difficult. China produces practically all of the world’s equipment for making solar panels, and almost all of the supply of every component of solar panels, from wafers to special glass.
China is now able to produce more than twice as many solar modules as the world installs each year. Read more in our series on solar energy: This massive expansion in supply has helped drive down the cost of renewable energy for consumers, acting as a counterweight to the rising cost of capital needed to develop solar farms.