The significance, challenges, and policy recommendations for the photovoltaic industry: a twenty-year retrospective from a global industry leader

This paper reviews the twenty-year development path of LONGi, a leading global photovoltaic (PV) supplier, to distill the critical significance, defining characteristics, and key challenges of the PV industry. It subsequently proposes policy recommendations and international cooperation initiatives to ensure the sector’s sustainable future. The PV industry has developed at a pace exceeding all expectations, establishing itself as a high-efficiency, low-cost cornerstone of the global energy transition. In particular, for vast regions with limited or unreliable access to electricity, hybrid PV-plus-storage systems have become a superior alternative to fossil-fuel-based systems in both cost and speed of deployment. Over the past two decades, the industry has navigated a series of major policy-driven and market-driven crises, revealing its inherent traits of high policy sensitivity and rapid technological iteration. To navigate these dynamics, companies must prioritize financial resilience and sustained technological leadership. To bolster the industry’s sustainable development, this paper proposes that China’s PV sector elevate product and technical standards for downstream solar cell production. Furthermore, it is essential for grid operators to expedite the introduction of policies supporting energy storage and to drive the technical reform of grid operations, thereby creating the conditions for broader participation in green power trading. Finally, this paper calls for deepened international cooperation, leveraging China’s comprehensive industrial ecosystem to accelerate global progress toward carbon neutrality.