In January, China announced an end to export subsidies for solar panels and a phased end to value-added tax rebates on batteries. The cuts, which took effect on April 1, have raised concerns for renewable energy markets globally, including African countries, which rely heavily on Chinese imports.
With solar increasingly becoming a reliable power source across the African continent, it has seen a boom in imports of related technology, mostly from China. The first decisive evidence of a solar take-off in Africa was recorded in 2025 when imports of solar panels from China to Africa rose sharply over 12 months, adding 60% more potential electricity generation capacity than in the previous year.
Energy think-tank Ember found that the growth was led by countries that have suffered widespread power cuts like South Africa, Nigeria and Zambia, where solar panels are increasingly appealing to businesses and households seeking reliable power without having to use expensive fossil fuel generators.
But experts fear this explosive growth could be affected by the cut in tax rebates for clean technology from China – and because of the Iran war, the prices of these technologies could rise even higher, making the transition unaffordable for many Africans.
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Climate Home News spoke to Karl Boyce, Chief Executive Officer of ARC Power, a renewable energy developer that works in Africa, about what these subsidy cuts could mean for the continent, how it can prepare for price and demand shocks, and what must be done to bridge Africa’s energy access gap.
Q: How will the recent export subsidy cuts by China affect the growth of clean energy usage in Africa where it’s increasingly becoming a reliable source of power for communities?
A: China’s removal of the export subsidy will certainly impact this sector in Africa, but probably not as extensively as we might first think. Solar pricing has dropped significantly in recent years, so this might just level it out to a more realistic and stable price in the longer term.
A product shortage in the near term could be a possibility, as rushed procurement might occur to secure products ahead of the next phased rebate drop in 2027. In parallel, we have already seen shipping pricing increasing from some of our recent orders, due to the war in the Middle East.
Regarding battery storage, various potential manufacturing opportunities are being explored, but these are still nascent, despite Africa having significant amounts of the critical minerals needed for battery manufacturing.
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Q: About 600 million people still lack access to electricity in Africa. What are some of the barriers to bridging this gap?
A: One reason is a lack of access to funding at scale across the sector. Another is that regulations in some African countries are still evolving and changing, which makes the process slow.
With mini-grids, it’s quite challenging because most of the connections in a community will be households who are probably paying [about] $3 a month for their power, which makes it really difficult for developers or investors to actually get their money back. It might take 10 years.
A lot of funding has gone into these solar home systems, which is great just to give people lights for the first time. But we’ve seen with all the communities where we’re working that people want more than that. They want to be able to set up their business, and they don’t just want to be able to charge their phone and have a few lights – they actually want the ability to have appliances and things like that.
I think the risk appetite for investments in solar mini-grids seems to be changing, hopefully for the better. Also we seem to be seeing more and more investors focusing on impact as well, which is so nice and so positive to see.
Q: We’re less than four years away from the deadline for the UN’s universal energy access target and the gap is still far from being bridged in Africa. Can the continent meet the 2030 target and how are initiatives like Mission 300 helping?
A: Last year at an event in Kenya, the secretary-general of Sustainable Energy for All, Damilola Ogunbiyi, was talking about the fact that the last few years were the first time energy access was actually reduced because it hasn’t kept up with population growth.
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But, while I would confidently say that we’re not going to achieve the Mission 300 target of connecting 300 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa to electricity by 2030, I think they’ll go a long way towards it.
Even though there are only about three-and-a-half years left, with the funding that’s being focused on it, I think the World Bank seems to have made it kind of a priority now [through Mission 300]. I am hoping that there will be a big step towards it. Even if they achieve half of their target, that would be such a significant step forward.
To go further towards achieving the 2030 target, there has to be a really big push on improving regulations in the countries so they become less bureaucratic. It just speeds up the process, because that’s the thing we have seen firsthand, where even if you have funding and you have the ability to do it, things are still being slowed down by regulations.
It’s hard because you’ve got so many different countries with totally different kinds of business environments and business cultures, different regulations. This is the challenge. Obviously there’s not going to be one thing that just fixes everything across the continent.
Also, I think that the approach to funding definitely has to change. We need more concessional funding to support other funding to come in, to de-risk it slightly. Access to capital has been one of the biggest barriers. And it always frustrates me, because they always say there’s so much capital out there, but not enough good projects. But when you speak to any developer, they’re always saying the same thing: it’s just trying to access capital.
Q: ARC Power operates a model called FUSE and, with support from the World Bank under the Mission 300 initiative, you are helping fund energy access in some African countries. How are models like yours helping to move the needle in areas that lack access?
A: We were building mini-grids in Rwanda and the government changed their strategy and decided they wanted everyone connected to the national electricity grid, which is obviously very ambitious. But they basically said, we don’t want any more mini-grids in Rwanda.
Some other developers left and pulled out of the market – and it forced us to rethink how we work, and this is where we developed the FUSE model. It’s a public-private collaboration with the utility company and the government, but we’re bringing in private investment to build out their energy infrastructure.
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So we’ll sign a FUSE agreement with the utility company. We will then finance, design and construct grid expansion, so this is still first-time energy access, it can still be real rural areas, but we will basically build out an extension to the national grid. We put in solar, we’ll see what’s connected and how to connect everyone.
Our strapline as a company is “to power” and we are very clear with the utility companies and governments that when we go into an area we want to connect everyone. We’ll connect everyone and then once it’s all constructed and built, and the utility company has ensured it’s to their standards and they sign off, then they pay us over, say, 10 years.
What this is allowing us to do is really accelerate energy access. So, for each dollar invested, we can probably do five times as many connections as we would have been able to do if we were building just a mini-grid, just because we get our capital back quicker.
It’s also good for households because one of the challenges you have is often that you might have a utility company and a mini-grid developer almost competing for a site.
The other thing is the tariffs. You have to have this kind of cost-reflective tariff as a mini-grid operator to get your money back, which means it could be five times the price of the national grid tariff. In Rwanda, we saw houses connected to the national grid probably 500 metres away from a house that’s connected to a mini-grid and the house connected to the mini-grid is paying five times the price.
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Q: Which would serve Africa better – is it mini-grids, utility-scale renewables that can be fed into the grid, or smaller-scale rooftop installations that serve households?
A: In Rwanda, the FUSE model definitely works. Because it’s a small country, nowhere is more than probably a few kilometres from the grid. In some of the larger countries like Mozambique – which is a great example where we’re operating – I think there will always be a requirement for mini-grids, but they complement each other.
In places where you’ve got the national grid infrastructure and it’s growing slowly, we would go to the utility company and say: “You obviously have your plan of where you would like to expand the grid, and all of these tens of thousands of houses that you’d like to connect – let us do it, and we will bring in funding from the private sector”, and then it makes it much more affordable and we can accelerate it.
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West Africa is absolutely on our radar, it’s where we will be definitely targeting. At the moment we are in Rwanda, Mozambique and Zambia, we’re targeting another eight countries in East and Southern Africa in the next six months, and then our plan is to go and start pitching to West African countries.
The World Bank and its International Finance Corporation arm have clearly said to us that they’ve seen the FUSE model can be one of the key solutions in this Mission 300 because it’s so scalable.
This interview was shortened and edited for clarity.
The post Q&A: Will subsidy cuts for Chinese clean-tech exports hurt Africa’s solar boom? appeared first on Climate Home News.
Q&A: Will subsidy cuts for Chinese clean-tech exports hurt Africa’s solar boom?
Kicking off proceedings at the mid-year climate talks in Bonn amid fraught global geopolitics, UN climate chief Simon Stiell told delegates that tackling the global climate crisis is “the hardest, but most important, thing humanity has ever tried to do together”.
Perhaps hoping to forestall the usual diplomatic wrangling that routinely bogs down the talks, he warned governments that there is no time to “re-open past debates or renegotiate commitments already made”.
Instead, he added, there is an imperative to accelerate real-world action as deadly heat intensifies and the fossil-fuel cost crisis sparked by the Iran war strangles economies, “taking a wrecking ball to lives and prosperity”.
That message seemed to sink in with the negotiators in Bonn, where the opening session kicked off only an hour late and was not marred by agenda rows, which delayed the start of the talks by a day last year.
On bridging the gap between the negotiations and the real economy, Stiell called for elevating the Global Climate Action Agenda, a goal long promised but never fully delivered.
But, he added, Türkiye – working with Australia – is now building on the efforts by last year’s COP30 presidency to streamline this process into six thematic areas, including boosting energy and food security, curbing methane and strengthening the resilience of cities.
Stiell was also keen to stress that the formal negotiations remain central to driving implementation of the Paris Agreement. He urged governments in Bonn to advance key issues including the Global Goal on Adaptation, the delivery of the outcomes of the first Global Stocktake and the development of a new just transition mechanism.
The first Global Stocktake was an assessment of countries’ collective progress in meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement, which led to a 2023 agreement to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems and a 2030 goal to triple renewable energy, among other things.
Hinting at upcoming reforms to the UN climate regime – which has often been accused of failing to keep pace with advancements in the real world – Stiell said all institutions must continuously evolve and improve. The UN climate secretariat has heard countries’ calls to work more efficiently, support access to climate finance and reduce the reporting burden on governments, he added.
Türkiye to outline targets for Action Agenda
While Australia will run the negotiations at COP31, for co-host Türkiye – which is organising the talks in Antalya – the focus is on the so-called Global Climate Action Agenda. This is a sprawling smorgasbord of around 500 voluntary initiatives bringing together governments, businesses, investors, cities and civil society. It covers everything from strengthening power grids for clean energy, to restoring degraded forests and land, and reducing emissions from buildings.
COP31 President-Designate Murat Kurum told the opening session of the Bonn talks his team will present the “main framework” of the Action Agenda on Tuesday, adding it will be “based on concrete and tangible targets”. He also said Türkiye will announce a roadmap for translating what happens in the negotiations into the real world, which will ”point to a science-based process with highly clear and defined outcomes” and steps for getting there.
“In the second decade of the Paris Agreement, the COP31 Action Agenda will bring the outcomes of the first Global Stocktake to life, and we will make a strong start to the second decade,” Kurum said.
In a joint letter issued in May, the two host nations said COP31 will be shaped as an “Implementation COP” and a “COP of the Future,” aimed at translating commitments into tangible and trackable progress. They outlined priority areas – to be achieved through the six axes of the Action Agenda defined ahead of COP30 – including electrification, zero waste, resilient cities, sustainable agriculture, green industrial transformation and climate finance.
Chiming with this, Australia’s Chris Bowen, the COP31 president of negotiations, made the global energy transition the centerpiece of his opening intervention in Bonn.
This year’s climate summit, he said, must send investors and corporations the message that countries are “collectively committed” to building up renewable energy and reducing fossil fuel reliance. Fossil fuels were not directly mentioned in the main outcome at COP30 last year after countries failed to agree on developing a global transition roadmap, which Brazil is now putting together outside of formal negotiations.
Bowen, Australia’s minister of climate change and energy, said that, while energy crises like the one the world is going through now will become more frequent and more unpredictable, accelerating the shift to cleaner sources will “ease shocks to our energy systems”.
He identified progress on electrification as a priority for COP31, pointing to an assessment by the International Energy Agency (IEA) that electricity’s share of final energy consumption needs to reach 35% by 2035 to keep the 1.5C temperature goal in sight.
“In a world of geopolitical uncertainty and energy disruption, the transition is not a risk,” Bowen added, “it is the solution and an immense opportunity”.
Tensions around trade and climate surface again
Over the weekend, it became clear that discussions on trade and climate would once again become a source of contention between countries – if not as explosively as they did at the start of the talks a year ago.
As agreed in the COP30 Global Mutirão decision, a series of dialogues on trade and climate will be held in Bonn yearly from 2026 to 2028. Climate Home News understands that the G77 + China has expressed discontent about the organisation of the first dialogue that will take place on June 13, because it plans to incorporate contributions from a range of organisations rather than just governments.
In a statement at the opening plenary, Uruguay, on behalf of the G77 group of developing nations, “encouraged Parties [countries] to engage constructively in the dialogue in a robust and structured manner”. Many in the Global South are concerned that international trade measures to make products greener, such as the European Union’s carbon levy on imports, could end up discriminating against them.
Russia warned during its opening statement that the new dialogue should not be used to create trade barriers.
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Avantika Goswami, climate change and green economy programme manager at the India-based Centre for Science and Environment, told Climate Home News that the UN climate secretariat has been unclear and untransparent about what will be discussed at the dialogue. “We don’t know if observers and civil society are going to be able to contribute,” she added.
After the three mid-year dialogues, in 2028 there will be a high-level event for countries to exchange their views and experiences, and the officials in charge will have to present a report summarising these discussions.
At Monday’s opening session, Antwi-Boasiako Amoah, the Ghanian chair of the African Group of Negotiators, said it would be “important to provide clarity on how they intend to present the report” and suggested that the co-chairs of the Bonn talks should consult with countries on how best to do that.
The post Bonn Bulletin: Tackling climate crisis is “hardest” challenge ever, Stiell says appeared first on Climate Home News.
Bonn Bulletin: Tackling climate crisis is “hardest” challenge ever, Stiell says
Climate Change
Bowen urged to lead with vision and ambition to accelerate fossil fuel phase out at Bonn climate meeting, as global energy crisis bites
Bonn, Germany, Monday 8 June 2026 — As the UN climate negotiations in Bonn commence, Greenpeace Australia Pacific is calling on Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen to lead with vision and ambition to advance multilateral climate cooperation, and use his unique position to drive concrete progress at COP31 and ensure a meaningful partnership with the Pacific.
In the context of a global energy crisis and turbulent geopolitics, the Bonn Climate Change Conference will be a critical moment to sustain emerging political momentum towards a just transition away from fossil fuels. The midway point on the road to COP31 in Türkiye in November, Bonn will be the first time Minister Bowen has attended a major UN conference in his role as COP31 President of Negotiations.
The start of the Bonn meetings also marks 100 days since the illegal US-Israel war on Iran sparked a global energy shock and after 57 countries including Australia met in Santa Marta, Colombia in April for the world’s first conference on the transition away from fossil fuels — a landmark moment signalling political winds of change in the face of threats to multilateralism.
Speaking from Bonn, Dr Simon Bradshaw, COP31 Lead at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “Amidst a global energy crisis, accelerating climate disasters and a looming super El Niño, the urgency to accelerate climate action and break free from fossil fuel dependence has never been clearer.
“Minister Bowen has been telling Australia and the world that we are in a global ‘fossil fuel crisis’, and that unhooking from fossil fuels is fundamental both to tackling the climate crisis and to ensuring secure and affordable energy. It’s time to match that message with a clear vision and agenda for COP31 — one that has the transition away from fossil fuels at its heart.
“As COP31 President of Negotiations, Australia has both the opportunity and responsibility to build on the momentum of COP30 in Belém and the recent landmark conference in Santa Marta on transitioning away from fossil fuels. This includes leading by example at home, with an immediate halt to new fossil fuel projects — including the mammoth proposed Browse gas project — and committing to develop a national roadmap away from fossil fuel production.”
“Few countries have as much skin the game as Australia: we are a country highly vulnerable to extreme heat, fires, floods and other impacts of climate change, we are suffering the consequences of fossil fuel dependency in terms of our energy security and affordability, but we have some of the world’s best renewable energy opportunities.
“Bonn is a key moment for the incoming Presidency to start shaping the vision, building the necessary trust, and actively setting priorities and expectations for the COP. We therefore hope and expect our Minister to be much more vocal and active in Bonn.
“Australia, in partnership with the Pacific, is taking the reins of global climate cooperation at a critical moment in the world’s transition away from fossil fuels. There is no more time to lose.”
Also in Bonn, Shiva Gounden, Head of Pacific at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “Multilateral cooperation is the antidote to climate and geopolitical chaos. At Bonn, Pacific nations’ legacy of leadership from the frontlines of the climate crisis can be our guiding star as we build a more peaceful and secure world for all.
“We must build on the progress at Santa Marta and break the hold fossil fuels have on our global security and economies. Pacific nations are already facing the brunt of a global climate crisis, but now facing the compounding injustice of an energy crisis brought on by fossil fuel dependence. We did not create either of these crises, but are among the most exposed to both.
“The International Court of Justice made clear that responsibility to address the climate crisis extends beyond borders and that continuing to expand fossil fuel production, including for export, could constitute an internationally wrongful act — a ruling that has now been overwhelmingly endorsed by the UN General Assembly. Continuing down the fossil fuel path, and failing to align efforts with limiting warming to 1.5C, is a breach of our international legal obligations.
“We must not lose sight of what’s needed — by elevating the voices of Pacific leaders, backing Pacific-led solutions, and maximising the opportunity of the Pacific pre-COP, we can ensure the 1.5°C imperative and the transition away from fossil fuels are central to the agenda at COP31, and that communities are granted the finance they need to build a strong, resilient future beyond fossil fuels.”
Ahead of SB64, Greenpeace International has produced a policy briefing outlining the core elements of a just transition away from fossil fuels and the urgent, priority actions needed from national governments and through global co-operation to make it a reality.[1]
ENDS
[1] A Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels: Policy Briefing
Photos in the Greenpeace Media Library
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 (Whatsapp/Signal) or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
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