Rhodium Group

Following decades of incremental change, electricity supply in the US is once again a growth industry, and data centers sit at the center of debates over affordability, reliability, and climate impact. Rhodium has previously quantified what surging data center demand means for US energy and emissions.

For governments and firms looking to diversify clean technology supply chains, solar stands out as a unique challenge given China’s scale and cost advantages. The US has ramped up trade barriers to reduce reliance on China’s domestic and overseas solar manufacturing, imposing anti-dumping and countervailing duties of up to 3400% on Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and Cambodia in April 2025, countries that have received significant Chinese solar manufacturing investment.

Beijing is taking steps to insulate its economy from the consequences of the war in Iran. But as China and other countries engage in new forms of “resource nationalism”—attempting to control key industrial inputs at home—the results are strained global supply chains and new constraints on China’s growth. China’s renewable energy manufacturing ecosystem is increasingly vulnerable to upstream constraints on raw materials.

Executive summary China has emerged as a major global clean tech investor, but the lack of robust data complicates analysis. Rhodium Group’s new China Global Clean Tech Investment Dashboard provides detailed data on both announced and completed foreign direct investment (FDI) by Chinese companies abroad across the electric vehicle (EV), solar photovoltaic (PV), and wind turbine value chains.

Key Findings Chinese FDI in Europe (EU and UK) rose for the second consecutive year, reaching its highest level since 2018. It increased by 67% to €16.8 billion in 2025. M&A activity drove the rebound, rising 89% year-on-year to €7.9 billion. But greenfield investment remained the primary channel for Chinese FDI in Europe, increasing by 51% to a record €8.9 billion. Europe made up nearly a quarter of global Chinese FDI in 2025, up from 17% in 2024.

In the first quarter of 2026, clean energy and transportation investment in the United States totaled $61 billion, a 3% decline from Q4 2025 and a 9% decline from Q1 2025. This marked the second quarter in a row with a year-over-year decline, following an unbroken year-on-year growth trend that had held since 2019.

Global clean technology manufacturing investment has moderated after a decade of extraordinary growth. China and the US were both the primary drivers of that rise and the subsequent pullback—though the nature of each country’s decline differs significantly. China’s clean manufacturing boom was built on sustained, multi-pronged government support paired with demand-side policies that created deep domestic markets.

A stretch of the South-Central and Southwest United States, from Louisiana and Texas to Arizona and Colorado, is already experiencing rapid changes to its energy system and economy, and those changes are poised to continue. Rapidly increasing electricity demand from large load sources like data centers and record installations of new electricity generators look to sustain this transformation.

Since the start of the Iran war, the vulnerabilities of the global fossil economy have been brought into sharp focus. Critical energy infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, trade has been disrupted, and daily energy price volatility has become the norm. The importance of resilient energy supply chains is as clear as ever, and an electrified economy supported by domestic clean power generation is rightfully central to this conversation.