China Nonferrous Metallurgy

Chinese carbon emission ranks first in the world, with an amount of 11.5 billion tons in 2020. In China’s primary energy consumption, fossil energy especially coal still remains dominant, which accounts for 57.7%. In recent years, although China’s carbon emission per unit GDP has decreased significantly, it is still higher than the world average. The development of polysilicon and crystalline silicon photovoltaic industry is expected to become an important support for clean energy and primary measure to achieve the goal of “carbon neutrality”. In 2019, China’s total photovoltaic power generation was 224.3 billion kW·h, accounting for 3.1% of the country’s total power generation. It is planned to reach 39% in 2050 when the power generation will be 6 trillion kW·h and the CO2 emission will be reduced by 7.1 billion tons approximately, which is the absolute main force of carbon neutrality. In recent years, the energy consumption and cost of polysilicon production have been greatly reduced. The development of monocrystalline silicon technology and diamond wire cutting technology has greatly reduced the material consumption. It is expected that the cost of crystalline silicon solar power generation will be the lowest among all power generation modes in the future, reaching 0.13RMB/kW·h, which provides a guarantee for the realization of the goal of photovoltaic power generation planning.