Institutional Arrangements and Socioecological Sustainability of Photovoltaics in China: A Critical Integrative Review with Wind Comparisons

Photovoltaic development changes rural incomes, land uses, and environmental responsibilities. This critical integrative review examines how institutions mediate these outcomes in China, using onshore wind as a comparison for grid integration, permitting, and ecological exposure. It connects energy justice, socio-technical transitions, and political ecology through a claim-level institutional evidence appraisal. Photovoltaic poverty-alleviation evaluations imply 7.5% higher county rural incomes in full samples and 2.6–2.7% in matched samples; a separate household panel reports a 0.0655 log-point income increase. These programme-specific estimates do not establish improved governance or a pooled national effect. Chinese-language survey and case evidence further distinguishes household benefits, collective assets, and deductions from distributable revenue. Ecological syntheses and a survey of 26 Chinese water-surface photovoltaic systems show habitat-dependent gains, losses, and non-significant responses. Scenarios project 112.8–160.5 million tonnes of cumulative Chinese photovoltaic waste by 2060, rather than observed current waste. The appraisal links each outcome claim to its proposed mediator, responsible actor, verification record, and corrective trigger. It identifies two testable connections: ecological operating restrictions may transmit costs to beneficiaries, and benefit agreements may expire before environmental liabilities. Recommendations distinguish provincial pricing and settlement rules, county oversight, collective accounting, and company obligations. This approach makes the conditions for sustainable photovoltaic development explicit while retaining the different evidential roles of observed outcomes, policy provisions, and proposed safeguards.