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Why is there overcapacity in China's PV industry in its early growth stage?

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  • Wang, Yong-hua
  • Luo, Guo-liang
  • Guo, Yi-wei

Abstract

China has rich solar energy resources with great potential for future development. In recent years, encouraged and guided by China's central and local governments as well as international market, China's PV industry has seen a fast development, with increasingly expanded output. A complete industrial chain has taken shape. In 2011, the PV industry of China saw an annual output value of more than 300 billion RMB and total exports and imports of 142 billion RMB, providing jobs for 300,000 people. The development of China's PV industry mainly relies on the European market. Major factors driving the increase of its production capacity include: huge profits at early stage; great support of governments; lack of effective development planning; low-end processing and manufacturing; low admittance standards. The overcapacity in China's PV industry here refers to overcapacity of PV products such as silicon, polycrystalline silicon, solar cells and PV modules. Impacted by the US Financial Crisis and the European Debt Crisis, the market demand for PV products has been shrinking, resulting in more serious overcapacity of the industry. The Chinese government had hoped that the domestic PV market could absorb the overproduced PV products. However, it seems that, due to insufficient development and uncoordinated incentive system, the domestic PV market may not be able to promote significant change of the situation in a short period. Therefore, it should take a long time to solve the problem of overcapacity.

Suggested Citation

  • Wang, Yong-hua & Luo, Guo-liang & Guo, Yi-wei, 2014. "Why is there overcapacity in China's PV industry in its early growth stage?," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 188-194.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:renene:v:72:y:2014:i:c:p:188-194
    DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2014.07.008
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    References listed on IDEAS

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