Special Report on Solar PV Global Supply Chains Solar PV is a crucial pillar of clean energy transitions worldwide, underpinning efforts to reach international energy and climate goals. Over the last decade, the amount of solar PV deployed around the world has increased massively while its costs have declined drastically.
Global solar PV manufacturing capacity has increasingly moved from Europe, Japan and the United States to China over the last decade. China has invested over USD 50 billion in new PV supply capacity – ten times more than Europe − and created more than 300 000 manufacturing jobs across the solar PV value chain since 2011.
Because diversification is one of the key strategies for reducing supply chain risks, the report assesses the opportunities and challenges of developing solar PV supply chains in terms of job creation, investment requirements, manufacturing costs, emissions and recycling.
will be discussed in detail in the next section.Overall, the global PV industr has been dominated in the last decade by China. This is true at all steps of the solar PV value chain, with China representing 79%, 97%, 82%, and 76% respectively of polysilicon, wafer
Currently, the cost competitiveness of existing solar PV manufacturing is a key challenge to diversifying supply chains. China is the most cost-competitive location to manufacture all components of the solar PV supply chain. Costs in China are 10% lower than in India, 20% lower than in the United States, and 35% lower than in Europe.
for the development of the solar PV industry1. The rapid increase in production sed on IEA, BNEF, LUT, IRENA, SolarPower Europe)The significant increase in production capacities at the main steps of the value chain (polysilicon, ingots/wafers, cells, modules and inverters) will crea