China’s photovoltaic products export exceeds $12 billion in January-April

China’s export of photovoltaic products totaled 12.7 billion U.S. dollars in the first four months this year, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

From January to April, 700,000 tons of multi-crystalline silicons, 320 gigawatts of silicon wafers, and 240 gigawatts of crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells were produced nationwide.

“Statistics shows that from January to April, the growth rates of our (photovoltaic industry) output across all links were all above 40 or 50 percent, or even higher than 100 percent at some links. The scale of our industry still maintained a momentum of rapid growth,” said Jiang Hua, deputy secretary-general of the China Photovoltaic Industry Association (CPIA).

Experts said that as an important clean energy, photovoltaic power has been rapidly expanding in recent years, and its installed capacity is to surpass that of thermal power in the future.

“In terms of the installed renewable power capacity represented by photovoltaic, photovoltaic has topped all the other renewable energy sources in newly-installed power supply in the past two years, and grows at a rate of more than 50 percent each year. Following this trend, photovoltaic will definitely surpass thermal power in installed capacity in the future. This is something beyond doubt,” Jiang said.