China’s Solar Industry to Embrace Faster Growth Amid Carbon Neutrality Goal

China’s solar industry is expected to embrace faster growth against the background that China aims to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060, according to experts at a photovoltaic conference held on Thursday in Jintan, Jiangsu Province, China.

To achieve carbon neutrality goal, China’s energy structure will experience fundamental changes with the share of fossil energy in the primary energy mix to decline sharply while the share of renewables, such as solar and wind power, to grow at a fast pace, said Zhou Dadi, deputy president of China Energy Research Society, at the Jintan Photovoltaic New Energy Development Summit.

“China should rapidly increase the share of non-fossil energy in its primary energy consumption to achieve carbon neutrality goal, especially promoting the decarbonization of power generation industry.” said Liu Yiyang, deputy secretary-general of China Photovoltaic Industry Association.

On this expectation, renewable energy, such as solar and wind power, will embrace faster growth in the future, said Liu, forecasting that China’s new installed solar projects will reach over 65 GW per year from 2021 to 2025.

In 2020, the installed photovoltaic power connected to the grid with price parity will reach 33.1 million kilowatts, according to the China’s National Energy Administration.

As China is promoting subsidy-free projects for wind and photovoltaic power to boost energy transformation, the nation’s solar industry will enter the era of grid price parity in the 14th Five-Year Plan period, said Shi Jingli, a researcher with the China Renewable Energy Center under the Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission.

Regulators should work out policies to help enhance the technology upgrading and reduce costs for the solar power industry, as the efficient technology and low cost are the major drivers for the industry development, said Shi.

At the summit, China Economic Information Service (CEIS), a subsidiary of Xinhua News Agency, published its annual development report for China’s photovoltaic industry, which expects that the solar industry will become a competitive energy in China’s primary energy mix.

Jintan, one of China’s fast growing solar industry bases, has attracted a large number of solar companies each with annual revenue over one billion yuan, covering the whole photovoltaic industry chain. In 2019, the business revenue of the solar industry in Jintan totaled nearly 30 billion yuan.