The head of China’s solar industry association has stated the National Energy Administration is fine-tuning its solar policy for next year and will formally publish its decision shortly.
Wang Bohua, secretary-general of the China Photovoltaic Industry Association (CPIA) was attempting to reassure more than 500 industry representatives in Shenzhen last week that the policy vacuum which delayed project deployment this year would not recur in 2020. However, he may have stoked fears about public subsidies for large-scale solar with newswire Reuters reporting in late November Beijing was ready to halt all payments for utility scale projects at the end of this month, a year earlier than previously stated. pv magazine has been unable to substantiate that claim.
Wang appeared to confirm the slowdown in Chinese PV capacity installation by predicting only 40 GW of new solar will be added next year.
Such an outcome would mark a sharp rebound from this year, which saw only 17.5 GW of new capacity added to the end of October, according to CPIA figures, a total which appears unlikely to pass 30 GW even in the event of an end-of-year project surge that has thus far shown little sign of taking shape.