Backed by India’s leadership, the ISA has channelled finance and expertise to emerging economies through a South–South cooperation model. Its Affordable Finance at Scale program has allocated over $2 billion USD for solar projects, while the Global Solar Facility works to de-risk private investment. Both initiatives support ISA’s goal of mobilising $1 trillion in solar funding by 2030.
China’s solar surge is powering the global transition
China started fostering solar installation well before the Paris Summit, through measures like a national feed-in tariff. Still, solar did not exceed 1% of China’s electricity generation until 2016, a year after the world overall passed this milestone.
In its initial NDC, the country committed to peaking carbon emissions around 2030 and increasing the non-fossil share in its primary energy consumption to 20%. Statements from Chinese officials after the Paris Summit confirmed that China’s emission reduction commitments were a significant driver of its solar development. In 2020, the country announced its carbon neutrality target, which further strengthened long-term market confidence.
China has become the undisputed world leader in solar generation and manufacturing, reaching its national target to install 1,200 GW of wind and solar by 2030, six years ahead of schedule, in 2024.
As a result, solar generated 8.3% of China’s electricity (839 TWh) in 2024, a 21-fold expansion from 0.7% (40 TWh) in 2015. Solar overtook bioenergy in 2016, gas in 2020 and nuclear in 2022 and now stands as the country’s fourth largest source of electricity behind wind (9.9% in 2024), hydro (13%) and coal (58%).
In 2015, the Chinese government introduced the ‘Top Runner’ programme to upgrade the quality and efficiency of solar modules, both to lower domestic deployment costs and make Chinese manufacturers more competitive globally. As solar demand surged after Paris, China’s market leadership grew: in 2011, four of the top ten solar module manufacturing companies were Chinese, by 2019 this had risen to eight.
Today, China is home to 80-90% of global solar manufacturing, with exports increasing from a few gigawatts (GW) in 2015 to nearly 350 GW of panels, cells and wafers in 2024. The spectacular fall in global module prices is largely due to the scale of China’s investment in production and innovation, stimulated by manufacturing policy and large-scale domestic deployment.