New research from Switzerland showed that the recent efforts to compensate for China’s dominance in the PV industry can lead to “cost-significant” inefficiencies throughout the supply chain. However, the scientists discovered that achieving regional supply chain objectives can benefit the global PV ecosystem.
Scientists at Switzerland Eth Zurich have analyzed the potential consequences of the efforts of the European Union to rebuild a photovoltaic industry and have discovered that China will remain a dominant supplier in all scenarios at least until 2030.
“The study is tailored to a much-needed scenario with net no-zero,” said the main author of the research, Giovanni Sansavini, said PV -Magazine. “According to this scenario, achieving worldwide climate goals requires rapid upscaling of the PV implementation of solar PV. To guarantee sufficient delivery, the production capacity must increase well in advance, with at least 1.5 times the 2022 level worldwide and even more in specific regions.”
“Capacity planning is future-oriented and the production capacity must be in force before the question is,” said Sansavini, when asked how the production capacity of the global PV industry can grow, given the current scenario on capacity. “Moreover, some regions build up the local capacity to reduce trust in imports, support local jobs or to improve energy security, even if this leads to temporary overcapacity. The effects of these choices are studied in our model, always a worldwide optimization perspective.”
According to Sansavini, the user percentages will be continuously uneven, ranging between 58% and 79% worldwide, and less than 10% in some countries. “This reflects inefficiencies and geographical mismatches instead of a lack of future need,” he said. “So, although there is overcapacity nowadays, a large share is under -utilized or not ideally located. Optimization in the longer term in our work still supports the need for expansion, but with more balanced regional planning.”
“In short, the current market is confronted with overcapacity and under -utilization. But on the basis of demanding projections and energy goals in the long term, global capacity still has to increase by 2030, with better planning to reduce geographical mismatches,” he added. “Moreover, some expansion can also be powered by policy -oriented focused on local needs, and not purely based on short -term market signals.”
In the study “Policy-driven transformation of global Solar PV chair supplies and resulting effects“Published in Nature communicationSansavini and his colleagues in particular investigated how the European policy actions aimed at building a local solar PV -Supply Chain can influence global trade flows in the period from 2021 to 2030. Their analysis considered the production of polysilicon, ingots, waffles, cells, cells and modules in 12 regions around the world among different global scenarios.
“In all scenarios, Europe is fully self-sufficient in the production of modules, due to the relatively low costs of building production capacity and the aim of maximizing jobs,” the scientists emphasized, and noted that rebuilding a European PV module-supply chain may require investments in $ 50 billion. In addition, they estimate the costs for redeeming polysilicon and ingot production between $ 20 billion and $ 52 billion.
The analysis showed that China will remain a super power in the Solar PV-Supply Chain thanks to the production capacity and production costs, and the aforementioned need to expand worldwide capacity by more than 1.5 times, with trade barriers that increase the costs of creating jobs by a maximum of 30%. “In addition, trade barriers can simply shift instead of resolving trade dependence,” the academics emphasized, and added that subsidizing a European industry can offer more benefits than closing the Chinese products market.
“Subsidies for producers are conducive to increasing the self -supply in the production of modules by moving some costs from companies to the government,” they concluded. “In comparison with trade barriers on China, subsidies can reduce industrial costs by 23.6%, jobs create 27.5% more cost -efficient and offer a similar profit in self -supply.”
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