Researchers say China’s overseas green manufacturing spree is not just foreign direct investment—it’s a bid for deep-rooted influence in global decarbonization. “China’s manufacturers have become pivotal actors in the global clean-tech transition,” writes Mathias Larsen from Brown University, lead author of recently released ‘China Low Carbon Technology FDI Database’.

The latest database counts 461 manufacturing projects across batteries, battery materials, charging infrastructure, green hydrogen, and more—a breadth made possible by harmonizing data from Chinese and global sources and subjecting each project to rigorous manual verification.

The transformative potential for host nations is significant—access to technology, supply chains, and new green jobs—but so too are the challenges, from safeguarding local value addition to managing environmental impacts and responding to new global power dynamics. As the world’s clean-energy future takes shape, this much is clear: when the world’s biggest dragon goes green, the effects are impossible to ignore.

Move over, Uncle Sam—there’s a new green superpower in town, and it’s roaring in Mandarin. In a seismic shift worthy of the history books, China has now eclipsed the United States as the world’s top exporter of green industrial might, surging past the old guard and remaking the global energy map with its vast outpouring of overseas clean-tech investment.

A green tsunami rolls in

Since 2022, Chinese manufacturers have pumped an eye-watering $227 billion into foreign battery, solar, wind, and electric vehicle factories—an influx so colossal it actually surpasses the USD 200 billion, adjusted for today’s dollars, that the US invested in the famed Marshall Plan after World War II. As the new ‘China Low Carbon Technology FDI Database‘ bluntly puts it, “This surge of overseas green manufacturing investment is unprecedented; it now surpasses the USD 200 billion (in current 2024 dollars) invested by the US over four years of the Marshall Plan, at a time of similar American dominance of manufacturing in key industries”. The database, initiated in early 2025, is a preliminary part of the broader Global Low Carbon Technology FDI database hosted by Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab at Johns Hopkins University and Global Development Policy Center at Boston University.

The Red Dragon isn’t just playing its “green card”—it’s outplaying the house and calling the shots.

The end of American green hegemony

What’s at stake? The old post-war manufacturing world order may be crumbling. As co-author of the report Mathias Larsen notes, “China’s manufacturers have become pivotal actors in the global clean-tech transition,” and the scale of their overseas push has now left traditional powers playing catch-up and reconsidering their entire industrial future.

This is no incremental story—it’s a generational leap. More than 80% of Chinese green-tech manufacturing projects abroad were launched since 2022, with a record 165 new plants and lines announced in 2024 alone. The database tallies 461 projects in 54 countries, rewiring everything from Indonesian nickel to Moroccan green hydrogen and European gigafactories.

New superpower hotspots

Forget the usual suspects. The new global clean industry has flagship projects sprouting from the tropics to the tundra. Indonesia is now “the linchpin of China’s offshore battery-materials strategy,” drawing in waves of nickel-rich precursor investments and new solar lines. Morocco positions itself as “continental leader” with a dazzling array of cathode and green hydrogen facilities, all feeding the EU’s energy ambitions. The Gulf states are seeing a flood of Chinese capital for solar modules and electrolyser manufacturing, while Central Asia, Latin America, and MENA have recently entered the map—sometimes almost overnight.

All-in on every green technology

The drama isn’t just in the geography; it’s in the technology race. What started as a solar surge pre-pandemic has exploded into batteries, charging infrastructure, NEVs, wind turbines, and even early-stage green hydrogen. Battery materials alone now command the largest chunk of spending—over $62 billion by 2025—driven by capital-hungry mineral processing and precursor “gigaplants”. Green hydrogen tallies up even more per project, with the average facility running to $2 billion—a scale that dwarfs earlier waves of solar investment.

The rise of china’s corporate champions

It’s not just a story of abstract numbers. Industrial titans like CATL, BYD, and LONGi have vaulted to the leadership of the green world, steering more mega-projects outside China’s borders than many G7 economies combined. More than 60 projects now exceed $1 billion each. “Across both metrics the same industry heavyweights… consistently appear, underlining the pivotal role of China’s corporate champions,” the report notes, making clear that this is not a scattershot affair, but a concerted global campaign.

A Playbook for Host Nations

For countries hoping to ride the wave, the research leaves no doubt: “Tailor incentives to sector economics.” Battery and hydrogen megafactories chase tax holidays and long-term finance; solar and NEV lines want local-content rules and guaranteed markets. But, the warning is just as clear—without planning for grid expansions, ports, and skilled workforce, these “megaprojects” risk becoming isolated economic enclaves rather than engines of national growth.

Slowing—but not stopping

After the fever pace of 2024, hints of consolidation are emerging in 2025, with “only” 68 new projects in the first half of this year—a pace still far above pre-boom years, but signaling some strategic pause. Geopolitics, evolving trade barriers, and new “light-asset” strategies (like licensing and OEM deals) are shaping the next chapter. But as the underlying tech and know-how spiderwebs deeper into global supply chains, the real story may be only just beginning

The cost of solar panels has dropped by more than 99 percent since the 1970s, enabling widespread adoption of photovoltaic systems that convert sunlight into electricity, according to an interesting new research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

A comprehensive MIT study has identified the specific innovations behind this dramatic transformation, revealing that technical advances across a web of diverse research efforts and industries played a pivotal role in making solar energy economically viable worldwide.

Cross-industry innovation network

The research, published in PLOS ONE, demonstrates that key innovations often originated outside the solar sector entirely, including advances in semiconductor fabrication, metallurgy, glass manufacturing, oil and gas drilling, construction processes, and even legal domains.

“Our results show just how intricate the process of cost improvement is, and how much scientific and engineering advances, often at a very basic level, are at the heart of these cost reductions,” study senior author Jessika Trancik said in a media statement. “A lot of knowledge was drawn from different domains and industries, and this network of knowledge is what makes these technologies improve.”

Trancik, a professor in MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, led the research team that identified 81 unique innovations affecting photovoltaic system costs since 1970, ranging from improvements in antireflective coated glass to the implementation of fully online permitting interfaces.

Strategic Implications for Industry

The findings could prove instrumental for renewable energy companies making R&D investment decisions and help policymakers identify priority areas to accelerate manufacturing and deployment growth.

The research team included co-lead authors Goksin Kavlak, now a senior energy associate at the Brattle Group, and Magdalena Klemun, currently an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, along with former MIT postdoc Ajinkya Kamat and researchers Brittany Smith and Robert Margolis from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Key findings

Building on mathematical models previously developed to analyze engineering technologies’ effects on photovoltaic costs, researchers combined quantitative cost modelling with detailed qualitative analysis of innovations affecting materials, manufacturing, and deployment processes.

“Our quantitative cost model guided the qualitative analysis, allowing us to look closely at innovations in areas that are hard to measure due to a lack of quantitative data,” Kavlak said in a media statement.

The team conducted structured literature scans for innovations likely to affect key cost drivers such as solar cells per module, wiring efficiency, and silicon wafer area. They then grouped innovations to identify patterns and tracked industry origins and timing for each advance.

Module vs. Balance-of-system innovations

The researchers distinguished between photovoltaic module costs and balance-of-system (BOS) costs, which cover mounting systems, inverters, and wiring. While PV modules are mass-produced and exportable, many BOS components are designed and built locally.

“By examining innovations both at the BOS level and within the modules, we identify the different types of innovations that have emerged in these two parts of PV technology,” Kavlak added.

The analysis revealed that BOS costs depend more heavily on “soft technologies”—nonphysical elements such as permitting procedures—which have contributed significantly less to cost improvements compared to hardware innovations.

“Often, it comes down to delays. Time is money, and if you have delays on construction sites and unpredictable processes, that affects these balance-of-system costs,” Trancik said.

Industry cross-pollination

The research found that innovations from semiconductor, electronics, metallurgy, and petroleum industries played major roles in reducing both PV and BOS costs. BOS costs were additionally impacted by advances in software engineering and electric utilities.

Notably, while most PV panel innovations originated in research organizations or industry, many BOS innovations were developed by city governments, U.S. states, or professional associations.

“I knew there was a lot going on with this technology, but the diversity of all these fields and how closely linked they are, and the fact that we can clearly see that network through this analysis, was interesting,” Trancik said in a media statement.

“PV was very well-positioned to absorb innovations from other industries—thanks to the right timing, physical compatibility, and supportive policies to adapt innovations for PV applications,” Klemun added.

Quantifying impact

To demonstrate their methodology’s practical applications, researchers estimated specific innovations’ quantitative impact. For example, wire sawing technology introduced in the 1980s led to an overall PV system cost decrease of $5 per watt by reducing silicon losses and increasing manufacturing throughput.

Future applications and computing power

The analysis highlighted the potential role of enhanced computing power in reducing BOS costs through automated engineering review systems and remote site assessment software.

“In terms of knowledge spillovers, what we’ve seen so far in PV may really just be the beginning,” Klemun said, pointing to robotics and AI-driven digital tools’ expanding role in driving future cost reductions and quality improvements.

The research team plans to apply this methodology to other renewable energy systems and further study soft technology to identify processes that could accelerate cost reductions.

“Through this retrospective analysis, you learn something valuable for future strategy because you can see what worked and what didn’t work, and the models can also be applied prospectively. It is also useful to know what adjacent sectors may help support improvement in a particular technology,” Trancik said. “Although the process of technological innovation may seem like a black box, we’ve shown that you can study it just like any other phenomena.”

The research provides crucial insights for understanding how complex technological systems evolve and offers a roadmap for accelerating innovation in renewable energy and other critical technologies through strategic cross-industry collaboration.