Today, solar power is among the most established renewable energy technologies. Energy analyses estimate that the photovoltaic (PV) industry offers the lowest average electricity cost among all sources, owing to significant cost reductions in solar panels, making it a ‘critical’ supply chain. Yet the solar growth is marked by significant social and ecological challenges, including low costs that rest on geographically uneven labour regimes, resource use, and environmental externalities, new interdependencies and rivalries among and within states and changing constellations of actors and regions.
This project examines the photovoltaic industry as a globally interconnected system, analysing how production activities, regulatory frameworks, and labour markets are organised and differentiated across geographies. Its main objective is to understand the economic and political dynamics that shape the industry’s emerging accumulation regimes, and how these are shaped by novel institutional arrangements, labour market dynamics, and local socioecological conditions.
By integrating diverse perspectives from the social sciences, including economic geography, sociology, and political ecology, as well as innovative methodologies, the project offers fresh insights into the global photovoltaic industry. It shows how this renewable energy sector is embedded in uneven development processes, with implications for sustainability, social justice, and territorial governance.
