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New Energy World™
New Energy World™ embraces the whole energy industry as it connects and converges to address the decarbonisation challenge. It covers progress being made across the industry, from the dynamics under way to reduce emissions in oil and gas, through improvements to the efficiency of energy conversion and use, to cutting-edge initiatives in renewable and low-carbon technologies.
As the Chinese government seeks an interim commerce deal with the US, the country’s solar power supply chain will be hoping long-standing allegations about using forced labour will not throw additional obstacles in the way of trade, writes Jens Kastner.
The solar industry has for years been embroiled in claims that its international competitiveness on price is based on state-imposed forced labour, notably within the Uyghur community and other minority groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of China. These tough allegations have been documented in numerous academic papers and journalistic reports, such as In Broad Daylight: Uyghur forced labour and global solar supply chains and Over-exposed: Uyghur region exposure assessment for solar industry sourcing, published by researchers at the UK’s Sheffield Hallam University’s Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice in 2021 and 2023, respectively.
Over-exposed argued that the Uyghur region is a hub of production for metallurgical grade silicon (MGS), a precursor of key solar panel material polysilicon. The report claims to have found that between 2021 and 2023 the issue of forced labour has not been resolved. Rather, many companies have attempted to bifurcate their supply chains to comply with regulations and consumer demand, producing some product lines that include Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region inputs, and others that they claim do not.
‘None of the companies that were engaged in state-sponsored labour transfers in 2021 has announced any changes to its recruitment methods or shown any resistance to participation in the PRC [People’s Republic of China] government’s programmes,’ the researchers wrote in the report.