China solar firms should focus on ESG amid domestic competition, regulatory hurdles: GCL

“Companies should consider carbon management to be their third core [focus] in addition to costs and technologies,” said Amy Song, the chief sustainability officer at GCL Group, during an interview with the Post this month.

Song’s advice came as China’s PV manufacturers, who control more than 80 per cent of the global supply chain, have weathered geopolitical and industry turbulence in 2024 and could face more stringent environmental requirements in the future.

Emissions from the manufacturing of solar equipment represented 0.15 per cent of energy-related global carbon emissions in 2021, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Most solar PV manufacturing is powered by fossil fuel and production is largely concentrated in China, where coal continues to account for more than half of the nation’s energy consumption, according to the IEA.

It would take about four to eight months of solar-panel operation to offset the industry’s manufacturing emissions, the IEA said.

At the end of 2023, China’s annual production capacity for finished solar modules was the equivalent of 861 gigawatts (GW), more than double the global module installations of 390GW, according to data from the China Photovoltaic Industry Association (CPIA).