“We are witnessing one of the fastest cost collapses in the history of energy technology. And it is not just solar. Across the entire energy stack, from generation to storage to transport, the business case for clean energy is becoming unbeatable.”
At the turn of the millennium, solar panels cost $5–6 per watt of capacity. Today they go for approximately 12 cents. This transformation is “entirely the result of an explosion in China’s production capacity”.
The solar price collapse is not a single breakthrough. It is the result of two decades of manufacturing scale, Chinese industrial policy, and relentless iteration. Rooftop installations and floating solar arrays are now so cheap that the limiting factor is no longer cost. It is grid capacity, permitting speed, and political will.
China now has roughly 1.36 terawatts of annual manufacturing capacity, and the effect of its scale and its innovations is the single largest expansion of energy access in human history.
Distributed solar – panels on roofs etc – reached almost 1.2 terawatts worldwide in 2025. Africa will install an estimated 17 gigawatts this year, most of it small-scale. India’s subsidised rooftop programme has reached over five million homes and is adding half a million a month. A cement plant in Chakwal, Pakistan, runs a quarter of its operations on its own panels.
The energy transition is no longer a subsidy-dependent experiment. It is an economic transition. Clean energy is becoming the cheapest, most scalable, most geopolitically resilient option across every sector.
That’s the reality of Chinese “overcapacity”. This is what the EU and US have been denouncing. It’s almost as if these people are more concerned with protecting Western hegemony than with helping the Global South access cheap, clean energy.
“This is what technology looks like when it serves life, not the other way around.”
Sources:
Carlos Martinez, Sep 16, 2026. https://www.facebook.com/carlosmartinez1/posts/pfbid02RiM2231EeHw37XLYaia4Z7JuxsPVdzSCpZxCs1gqE2EFEeMYxF6JJLXZKB4Bmp3al
Better Business World, Sep 16, 2026. https://betterbusinessworld.substack.com/p/solar-is-now-offensively-cheap-the
