The world is adopting renewable energy at an unprecedented pace, and Pv solar power is the energy source leading the way.

Despite a 4.5% fall in global energy demand in 2020, Visual Capitalist's Govind Bhutada notes that renewable energy technologies showed promising progress. While the growth in renewables was strong across the board, solar power led from the front with 127 gigawatts installed in 2020, its largest-ever annual capacity expansion.

China is the undisputed leader in solar installation system, with over 35% of global capacity. What’s more, China is showing no signs of slowing down. It has the world’s largest wind and solar power project in the pipeline, which could add another 400,000MW to its clean energy capacity.

In 2020, President Xi Jinping stated that China aims to be carbon neutral by 2060, and the country is taking steps to get there.

China is a leader in the solar energy industry, and it seems to have cracked the code for the entire solar supply chain. In 2019, Chinese firms produced 66% of the world’s polysilicon, the initial building block of silicon-based photovoltaic (PV) panels. Furthermore, more than three-quarters of solar cells came from China, along with 72% of the world’s PV panels.

With that said, it’s no surprise that 5 of the world’s 10 largest solar parks are in China, and it will likely continue to build more as it transitions to carbon neutrality.

The energy transition is a major factor in the rise of renewables, but solar’s growth is partly due to how cheap it has become over time.

This year, solar costs are rising due to supply chain issues, but the rise is likely to be temporary as bottlenecks resolve.