Geographical linkage and trade disruption within global photovoltaic supply chains

Abstract

Photovoltaics play an essential role in supporting the unprecedented growth of renewable energy transition as well as facing a series of trade risks due to complex international dynamics and intermittent trade disruptions. By combining complex network modeling and shock propagation analysis, the spatial-temporal evolution of photovoltaic supply chains worldwide was depicted, and the potential trade risks under different scenarios were elucidated in this study. The results show that the trade patterns of photovoltaic supply chains have evolved significantly, particularly characterized by the rise of China, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand. The complexity of photovoltaic supply chains increases significantly with the addition of more nodes and edges in the networks. The vulnerability of critical photovoltaic supply chains tends to intensify with the increasing concentration of global supply chains in a geographic sense. The interruption of trade ties between China and Vietnam may lead to the most drastic impact on photovoltaic supply chains, followed by trade disruptions between Southeast Asia and North America. By unveiling the spatial-temporal network evolution and potential trade disruption of global photovoltaic supply chains, it is practical to propose rational and feasible strategies that consider the geographical diversification and international cooperation of photovoltaic supply chains worldwide.

Keywords

Photovoltaic trade / Complex networks / Trade risks / Vulnerability assessment / Global supply chains

Data availability

For data stored in a repository, datasets for this research are available in open-access databases as follows: Trade data of the four main products in photovoltaic supply chains is obtained from the UN Comtrade Database, queried by the Harmonization System Code (HS Code) 280469 for impure silicon, 280461 for high-purity silicon, 381800 for silicon wafers, and 854140 for photovoltaic modules.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Weilong Li: Writing – original draft, Methodology, Formal analysis. Meng Zhang: Validation, Investigation, Data curation. Mengyao Han: Writing – review & editing, Methodology, Investigation, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This research is supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (Grant No. 22CJY202), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants No. 42371183 and 72348003), the Programme of Kezhen-Bingwei Excellent Young Talents (Grant No. 2023RC002), and the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. 2023058).

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.geosus.2025.100323.

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