China leans balance to distributed solar-power projects: challenge and opportunities

The Chinese government has bold ambitions to increase adoption of the distributed solar-power energy to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, battle severe air pollution and create global industry leader. It delivers a clear political signal on economic viability of solar-power industry by slowing down future capacity of large-scale projects but accelerating the distributed ones, which would account for about 55% by the end of 2020. Seven essential factors that influence this regulation were thus discussed. Such a political indication places challenge and opportunities for solar industry that would require elaborate and deliberation of innovative financing models and strategic development opportunities for those manufacturers, project developers, financial institutions, investors and policy-makers within the industry. This paper offers the insights of financing models and strategic development opportunities for the stakeholders to launch quality solar-power projects during the policy transition. It shows that distributed solar require large proportion of the total solar investment. Reliance on conventional corporate debt is insufficient while government loan guarantee, leasing and crowdfunding are promising financing models for companies to develop distributed solar projects. Potential strategies for companies/organizations to response including: (1) networking/collaboration among stakeholders, (2) developing core technologies of BAPV and BIPV, (3) further reduction of toolkit cost, (4) exploring energy storage for smart grid management and (5) upgrade business model regularly. While China’s government has many of the requirements in place for widespread adoption of solar power, the research results are critical to broaden access to capital and transit for high quality solar projects which can contribute meaningfully to a cleaner, brighter future for China and the world.