It is one of the world’s fastest growing industries, projected to be worth $223bn by 2026 amid a global battle to avoid dramatic climate change.
But the solar panel market’s breakneck 20pc annual growth hides claims of an ugly secret that threatens its clean-cut image.
Behind the numbers, campaigners suggest there are links to slave labour and human rights abuses in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, where Uighur Muslims are being persecuted on a massive scale.
The allegations have forced businesses normally thought to be on the right side of history to address a deepening crisis over their murky supply chains, and even led to accusations of complicity in genocide in one of the world’s most sensitive regions.
How did the industry get here?
Most modern solar panels rely on a vital raw material: crystallised silicon, known as polysilicon or "poly". It is used to make solar cells that turn sunlight into electricity.
Johannes Bernreuter, a polysilicon market analyst, says 80pc of solar-grade polysilicon comes from China. Around 45pc of the material produced globally comes from Xinjiang, where cheap electricity and lower environmental standards have rapidly made the territory the world’s solar workshop despite growing evidence of human rights abuses.
Few of the millions of consumers in Britain and around the world are aware of the link between the solar panels on their roofs and a region where Uighurs are allegedly detained in camps before "graduating" to factory work under so-called labour transfer programmes which human rights groups describe as "coercive".
A worker checks the installation of solar panels on the roof of new home
Credit: Mischa Keijser/Getty Images
Until recently, there was no direct evidence that solar panel makers were implicated in the atrocities in Xinjiang, but last month a report by consultant Horizon Advisory sent shockwaves through the industry.
It named three major polysilicon companies that "clearly participate in the transfer of labour programme", including GCL Poly (the world’s second biggest poly producer) and East Hope (the sixth biggest). Neither replied to The Telegraph’s request for comment.
Horizon co-founder Emily de La Bruyère explains the report relies on local government announcements and regional news reports explaining how these companies "absorb transfer of labour workers".
Giving an example, she says: "There’s an article from March 2020 which says [GCL] have received a transfer of labour workers from Southern Xinjiang and that article features a picture that’s captioned ‘Xinjiang GCL New Energy Material Technology conducts military posture training for transferred personnel’ and then another picture with them conducting etiquette training for transferred personnel."
A 2020 article on the East Hope website, which has recently been taken down but is still accessible via the internet archive, also describes how a subsidiary of the company "has accepted 235 ethnic minority employees from southern Xinjiang".
These firms may not be household names, but they are critical cogs in the supply chain, manufacturing much of the polysilicon that enables solar panels around the world to absorb sunlight and turn it into electricity.
The solar industry is complex, with components produced in Eastern factories before assembly and onward export to developers in the West. However, analysts say the huge role played by Xinjiang makes it extremely likely the region’s polysilicon sits on British roofs.
The revelations come at an inconvenient time, as UK solar is expanding fast.
Electricity generation in the UK by fuel type
About 900,000 UK households have installed panels, according to the Solar Trade Association, with consumers keen to save money on bills while doing their bit for the clean energy revolution.
Businesses that have thrived in this lucrative market are now anxiously weighing up the impact of coming British regulation that could mirror the US Uighur Forced Labor Prevention Act and effectively outlaw products from the region.
A group of 175 solar companies, mostly in the US, signed a pledge to help ensure that the solar supply chain is free of forced labour.
Salih Hudayar, prime minister of the East Turkistan Government in Exile, a Uighur group which considers Xinjiang an occupied nation, called the pledge a PR campaign.
"They should commit to not buying those products and to seeking other suppliers until these Chinese companies can certify 100pc that their products are free of slave labour," he said.
Julie Millsap, of the US-based Campaign for Uighurs, is calling on companies to sever ties with Xinjiang immediately.
"Continuing to maintain any relationship with a supplier who’s operating in the Uighur homeland is essentially a guarantee that the company will be profiting off of modern day slavery, and is complicit in genocide," she says.
According to Chinese officials, Xinjiang’s detention camps are "vocational education centres" established in response to poverty and separatism.
China’s foreign ministry has called the idea of forced labour "a complete lie".
Uighurs living in Turkey hold placards with pictures of family members they say they have not heard from in months and fear are being kept in detention camps in China
Credit: Mehmet Guzel /AP
Yet evidence suggests the centres are designed to suppress Uighur culture, language and religion in favour of the Han Chinese majority. Since 2018, many appear to have sprouted factories, feeding a boom in prison labour.
Some British firms insist they are not implicated.
Andrew Moore, chief executive of Buckinghamshire-based UKSOL, says he trusts his manufacturer in the Jiangsu region, near Shanghai.
"China is a very big country and our factory is far from Xinjiang," he says. "I have personally visited the factory many times to see for myself."
Others argue Uighur forced labour is not limited to China’s northwest.
A report last year by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), funded by the Australian government, found that Uighurs were being transferred to factories across China via a system of brokers who can earn up to 300 yuan (£33.68) per head.
ASPI said at least one factory, which made shoes, had installed watchtowers and barbed-wire fences.
Horizon co-founder Nathan Picard says that polysilicon from Xinjiang can be anonymously blended with materials from other areas and that factories cannot be freely inspected by international auditors.
"There should be an assumption that these risks are pervasive throughout the industry in China," he says.
‘Pervasive risks’
Oxford-based Exo Energy only buys from wholesalers it requests provide evidence stating there is no forced labour in their supply chain, but director Ben Robinson admits even this is not foolproof.
"It’s very difficult to know the practices happening so many thousands of miles away," he says. "Even when these factories are inspected, activities of that kind are probably hidden from inspectors.
"It’s tricky because you often miss out on work because your price is higher than a competitor."
The higher costs make him hesitate about cutting ties with China altogether, because he thinks his customers are unlikely to pay the premium.
Herefordshire-based Wind and Sun found that out the hard way. It does not buy any materials from China due to concerns coal is used in production.
Managing director Steve Wade says alternative Singaporean and South Korean panels are more expensive.
Are consumers willing to pay up? "Disappointingly, not so many," he says. "They all look the same."
Even if that changes, there is dispute about the disruption that could come from trying to abandon such a dominant supplier.
"There was a sizeable solar industry in Europe and also in the US, but Chinese manufacturers were undercutting those manufacturers by price and pushed them out of the market," says analyst Bernreuter.
Workers walk past solar panels and wind turbines at a newly-built power plant in Hami, Xinjiang in 2015
Credit: CHINA STRINGER NETWORK /Reuters
Solar advocates fear that leaving China would produce shortages that would push up prices, reversing or slowing momentum in the industry.
"[Shortages] might open the door for fossil fuels," says Robinson, of Exo.
One potential ray of hope comes from alternative technologies such as thin-film PV, a type of solar panel that requires no silicon and is mostly made by US companies. For now, it is too expensive for mass adoption.
Horizon’s Nathan Picard is unsympathetic to price concerns.
"If you’re claiming any degree of moral authority in what you’re doing, as a business or as a consumer, you should have a pretty stark line in opposition to modern slavery," he says.
He is confident there is a way to pursue solar energy’s benefits while "protecting human life and dignity" in China.
Exeo’s Mr Robinson says customers need to come to terms with the reality. "The customer needs to appreciate the cheaper the product, the more likely these kinds of practices have been applied."
With the breakneck growth of solar sure to continue, those concerns are only likely to grow louder.
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