How China Became a Solar Power

That momentum has been largely fueled by one country: China. Today, China commands more than 80 percent of the world’s solar supply chains, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA)—and even that figure only begins to capture the sheer speed and scale of the country’s solar sprint.

In just the first half of this year, for example, Beijing installed more than twice as much solar capacity as every other country in the world combined, according to Ember, a U.K.-based global energy think tank that supports a clean energy transition. And in May alone, China installed around 230 million solar panels, or nearly 100 panels every single second, according to an estimate by Lauri Myllyvirta, the lead analyst and co-founder of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a Finland-based independent research organization.

“China’s transformed the global solar industry,” said Richard Black, the director of policy and strategy at Ember.

Between 2010 and 2024, China’s solar photovoltaic manufacturing capacity exploded. (Photovoltaic cells, or solar cells, are the technologies that use sunlight to produce electricity.) Beijing has poured more than $50 billion into building new supply capacity, according to the IEA—eclipsing the investments of the entire continent of Europe by 10 times.

As China has scaled up its industry—known now for its fierce competition and economies of scale—costs have plunged, and the country’s solar exports have soared.

“I wouldn’t go as far as claiming it is a one-man show, but I think we’re almost there,” said Li Shuo, the director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

China’s solar ambitions are emblematic of its broader race toward a green energy future, driven in part by Beijing’s interest in becoming less reliant on imported oil and natural gas. While China is the world’s biggest coal consumer and has been the largest carbon emitter in recent years, it has also unleashed clean energy investments at a stunning pace, and last year, it was the biggest investor in the technologies globally, according to Ember.

“China has control of most of the sectors of the new energy economy of the 21st century,” said Joshua Busby, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who worked at the Defense Department under the Biden administration.

That command is most pronounced with solar power, but China has also staked out wind, battery, and electric vehicle supply chains—the same technologies that the Trump administration is now abandoning.

Those dynamics are set to loom over this year’s U.N. climate summit, known as COP30, which kicks off in Belém, Brazil, on Nov. 10. As diplomats and delegates from around the world gear up for another grueling round of negotiations, the Trump administration appears to be bucking the climate talks altogether, all while it champions the U.S. oil and gas industry and strong-arms other countries into buying U.S. fossil fuels.

China is hurtling toward an entirely different energy future—and solar power is central to its global pitch.

Workers inspect solar panels at a photovoltaic power generation base in Taizhou, China, on July 12, 2023. AFP via Getty Images

But in the early 2010s, Beijing emerged as a dominant player after many European governments, in an attempt to boost demand for solar power, offered hefty subsidies for consumer installations and investments of the technology. Backed by their own government subsidies from Beijing, Chinese firms leapt in.

“In the EU, there was a strong push to deploy more solar, so Chinese exporters were really benefiting from this export market,” said Ilaria Mazzocco, an expert in industrial policy and Chinese climate policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank.

The political backlash in Europe was swift. As Chinese firms made inroads in the continent’s market, European companies struggled to compete, and many halted production or went bankrupt. In 2012, the European Union launched an anti-dumping probe into China’s solar exports and ultimately imposed tariffs on Beijing.

More than a decade later, it’s still a sore point for Brussels.

“Europe was a global leader in solar, but heavily subsidized Chinese competitors started to outprice Europe’s young industry,” European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen declared in October as she warned that Europe must protect its domestic market from foreign competitors.

“This time, we should learn our lesson,” she added.

Still, for all of their successes in the global market, life’s not so rosy for China’s solar firms, which must fight to survive in a hypercompetitive, continually innovating market.

“You do have a cutthroat price competition that has driven profit margins to zero or negative,” Myllyvirta said. “It’s fiercely competitive.”

Yet that cutthroat environment and surging production have also meant that costs have plummeted over the years, driving up China’s global sales as energy-hungry countries around the world have taken advantage of the country’s cheap exports. Solar panels today cost just a slice of what they once did; according to Ember, their prices have tumbled by more than 80 percent in the past decade.

In fact, prices have fallen so sharply in recent years that even as China’s exports have surged, Beijing’s total solar export revenue peaked in 2023 and has lagged ever since.

From Latin America to the Middle East, the impacts of China’s solar expansion can be seen all around the world.

Take Africa, for example, where more than 600 million people across the continent still lack electricity access. Between June 2024 and June 2025, imports of Chinese solar panels to the continent spiked by a staggering 60 percent, according to Ember, while 20 countries also notched new records for solar panel imports from China during that span.

Further expansion is on the horizon: Just last month, South Africa inked a deal with Chinese municipalities to build a $35 million solar panel assembly plant in the South African city of Nkangala.

But even all of those solar imports fall short when compared to those of Pakistan, which imported more solar panels from China between June 2024 and 2025 than the entire African continent. Pakistan was in the throes of an electricity crisis at the same time that China was dramatically expanding production, Myllyvirta said. Now, Pakistan is one of the world’s top importers of solar panels.

China, for its part, only appears to be gearing up for more action. Beijing sees renewables as a more efficient, cost-effective, and “secure form of energy generation, and a big export industry,” said Mazzocco of CSIS.

“For China, this is becoming now a priority,” Mazzocco said. “It’s certainly not a priority anymore in the United States.”