Where in the world is clean energy technology made?

See more from Canary Media’s ​“Chart of the Week” column.

Clean energy is on a tear. In China and India, it’s growing so fast it’s starting to unseat king coal. In the European Union, solar and wind now produce more electricity than do all fossil fuels combined. Even in the U.S., amid the Trump administration’s attacks on clean energy, nearly all new power capacity comes from renewables and batteries.

But who, exactly, is making all of the solar panels, wind turbines, battery packs, and electric vehicles enabling this transition?

In a word: China. Let’s look at the latest numbers from the Clean Investment Monitor by Rhodium Group and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Right now, over 90% of the world’s solar manufacturing capacity is in China. So is 83% of the planet’s battery production capacity, and nearly three-quarters of wind technology manufacturing capacity. China’s grip on the EV sector almost looks measly in comparison, at just two-thirds.

China’s lead is explained by several factors. For one, the country itself uses way more clean energy tech than does any other, due not only to its massive population but also Beijing’s concerted effort to make the nation more self-sufficient on energy. Last year, more than half of the solar and wind installed worldwide plugged into China’s grid. The country dominates global EV adoption, too.

But China also exports enormous amounts of these technologies. The country’s expansion of manufacturing to meet its own domestic energy goals has allowed it to produce super-cheap solar panels, batteries, wind turbines, and EVs. That’s made clean energy more attractive to buyers in other countries.

But China’s investment in these factories is contracting, hard. Last year, it invested $60 billion in cleantech manufacturing overall — less than half of what it put in the year before. In 2023, it spent $50 billion on clean energy manufacturing in a single quarter. Investment in clean energy manufacturing has been sluggish in the U.S. and Europe, too, for what it’s worth, but it’s not crashing at anywhere near the same rate.

China is pulling back for a pretty intuitive reason. It’s already built more clean energy manufacturing capacity than the world wants to use at the moment. The Clean Investment Monitor team expects this mismatch to get even worse by 2030, so as it stands, it makes little sense for China to continue speeding ahead on new factory construction.

Overall, the clean-energy manufacturing picture could look a bit different by the end of this decade — but only by a little. Even with the U.S., Europe, India, and others expected to make some headway in the battery and EV markets, China’s lead ultimately isn’t expected to go anywhere.

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