NEW YORK, Nov. 15, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Breakthrough Institute, a global research center that identifies and promotes technological solutions to environmental and human development challenges, today released a new report, “Sins of a Solar Empire,” urging the climate community to rethink its approach to solar energy, especially the cheap solar photovoltaic panels produced in Xinjiang, China.
“Solar manufacturing plants that began operating in Xinjiang over a decade ago were attracted to industrial parks and coal mines established under regional political oppression that left Uyghur, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz peoples uniquely powerless—even by the political standards of authoritarian China—to object to local environmental and socioeconomic impacts,” write the report’s authors, Seaver Wang, Co-Director of Breakthrough’s Climate and Energy team and Juzel Lloyd, a Climate and Energy Analyst at Breakthrough.
In subsequent years, repression, including forced labor, has only gotten worse. Now, rather than turning a blind eye to abuses within the solar supply chain, environmental activists, energy experts, and the domestic solar industry should “move within a couple years to exclude all goods originating from solar manufacturers with any operations in Xinjiang and from any downstream companies that source any product from those manufacturers.”
Doing so will address the human rights violations, environmental problems, and market distortions created by China’s use of forced labor and coal-dependent manufacturing, and will set solar up for longer-term success as an important part of the green energy transition.
“Solar photovoltaics remain a key component of global clean energy efforts. Clean energy markets should mobilize to finance large-scale, alternative solar manufacturing capacity outside of Xinjiang, China,” said Wang. “Meanwhile, following the example of the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States, policymakers across the world should support solar supply chain reorganization efforts by enacting strong incentives for new solar factories.”
“Such efforts could ultimately strengthen the global solar sector over the long term,” added Lloyd. “A diversified solar manufacturing chain spread out across many countries will be more resilient to unpredictable disruptions, ensuring a more reliable and affordable supply of solar panels in the face of economic volatility or geopolitical tension.”
To read the full “Sins of a Solar Empire” report, please visit: https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/sins-of-a-solar-empire
For more on solar power and just environmental transitions, contact breakthrough@icrinc.com
About The Breakthrough Institute
The Breakthrough Institute is an environmental research center based in Berkeley, California. Our research focuses on identifying and promoting technological solutions to environmental and human development challenges in three areas: energy, conservation, and food and farming. For additional information about the Breakthrough Institute, please visit: https://thebreakthrough.org
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