CHENGDU, China - A decade ago, Tongwei Group was a maker of fish food and livestock feed. Today, the company, based in this famously overcast corner of southwest China, is the world’s largest producer of solar cells, the components of panels that turn sunlight into electricity. At its $2.8 billion facility on the outskirts of Chengdu, robotic arms stacked the delicate cells on autonomous carts that zipped between production stages. Productivity has gone up 161 percent - and the number of workers down by 62 percent - thanks to 5G equipment from homegrown technology giant Huawei, the company says. Tongwei now has even grander ambitions: It is rapidly expanding and upgrading six production facilities and, by the end of this year, aims to churn out 130 gigawatts’ worth of cells annually - four times the total solar capacity installed in the United States in 2023. China - through solar companies like this - will be without doubt the “main force leading the global energy transition,” said Liu Hanyuan, Tongwei’s founder and chairman. Tongwei encapsulates how China has come to dominate global clean technology markets. China produces 80 percent of the world’s solar panels - compared with the United States’ 2 percent - and makes about two-thirds of the world’s electric vehicles, wind turbines and lithium-ion batteries. That may be good for the Earth, which desperately needs to move away from fossil fuels to slow global warming. Climate activists hope that China’s surging investments in clean technology will soon tip the balance and stop the country’s emissions of carbon dioxide - which are nearly double those of the United States - from rising any further. Last year, China installed more solar panels than the rest of the world combined. But China’s overwhelming dominance has alarmed officials in the United States and in Europe, who say they are worried that a flood of cheap Chinese products will undercut their efforts to grow... |