The International Energy Agency has warned that China’s dominance of the solar panel supply chain could slow the global transition to cleaner energy.
An IEA report on the issue, the first of its kind by the organisation, found that China’s share in the manufacturing stages for solar, from the production of polysilicon to the panels themselves, exceeds 80 per cent, and in some stages could reach as high as 95 per cent by 2025.
“The world will almost completely rely on China for the supply of key building blocks for solar panel production through 2025,” the agency said in the report. “This level of concentration in any global supply chain would represent a considerable vulnerability.”