Contribution of international photovoltaic trade to global greenhouse gas emission reduction: the example of China

Abstract

Although using solar power rather than fossil fuel to generate electricity can greatly reduce carbon emissions, the production of photovoltaic (PV) products consumes a considerable amount of energy and causes substantial emissions. Thus, the environmental benefits of importers and exporters through the PV international trade are imbalanced. Countries that import PV products benefit from PV power generation, while countries that export PV products suffer the costs of energy consumption and carbon emissions during production. Such imbalance makes it difficult to calculate a country’s contribution to emission reduction of the world and its trade partners.This paper describes a method to calculate the contribution of a country’s international PV trade to emission reduction of the world and its trade partners based on the PV industrial chain, using international trade data from 2008, 2012 and 2016, taking China as an example. As the results show, the contribution of China’s international PV trade to worldwide emission reduction is over 1000 kilotons of CO2 each year and reached nearly 13,000 kilotons in 2016. India and the Netherlands benefit from trade with China, while Malaysia and the Republic of Korea bear the costs of emission transfer from China every year.