The solar industry and a vision for "green growth" in China

• In Event: Enviromental Politics

Abstract

China’s position on decarbonization changed dramatically over the past two decades, from refusing to cap emissions in defense of its “right to development” in the 2000s, to becoming a global leader in clean energy technologies in the 2020s and on track to peak emissions by 2030. This paper investigates what drove the shift by tracing one policy change that took place during the period of critical change (2009-2011): the introduction of a controversial fixed price (“feed-in-tariff”) on solar photovoltaic (PV)-generated electricity, following an “overcapacity” crisis in the industry. The process-tracing draws on over 100 archival documents and interviews with 19 expert informants, with a focus on four sets of actors: private PV companies, provincial governments, central policymakers in different bureaus, and think tanks experts. I find that two factors were crucial to the policy change: first, a green coalition made up of private PV companies and provincial governments; second, central economic planners’ vision for industrial upgrading toward a green, innovation-driven development model. Without advocacy by the green coalition, central state-owned enterprises would have used low prices in competitive tendering projects to dominate the PV market. Without a “green growth” vision at the center, expensive subsidies for the crisis-ridden PV industry could hardly be justified. The findings add nuance to two dominant explanations for China’s exceptional achievements in decarbonization: authoritarian state capacity, and export-led economic structure.

Author

• Guolin Gu, Boston College