China steaming towards 10GW annual PV market: IEA expert

The Chinese solar market will grow far faster than anyone expects, as Beijing grasps for ways to support battered domestic PV manufacturers, predicts Paolo Frankl, head of the renewable-energy unit at the International Energy Agency (IEA).

“I think China becomes a 10GW-plus PV market much quicker than anyone realises,” says Frankl. “In my personal opinion this will be faster than we [the IEA] have said, or even what the Chinese government says.”

Although Beijing is meticulously calibrating the schemes supporting China’s solar market, including recent reductions to its Golden Sun programme, the government is nevertheless finding ways to back local copmanies, industry sources say.

As one illustration, Yingli was last week able to issue 1.5bn yuan ($238m) of bonds with coupons of less than 6%,…

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