Rhodium Group

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.

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.

Executive Summary The US has clearly entered a new period of rising electricity prices compared to recent history. However, recent price increases are not driven by a single specific factor but rather by multiple, intersecting factors that vary substantially regionally and by individual utility.

The war in the Middle East and resulting blockages of the Strait of Hormuz have disrupted regional energy shipments, with widespread impact on the availability and price of oil. The price impact has been most acute for refined products like jet fuel, which have seen prices more than double since January.

The fiscal year 2025 budget reconciliation legislation, commonly called the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB) and signed into law by President Trump last week, will have meaningful reverberations across the US energy sector and economy. We estimate the law will increase national average household energy bills by $78-192 and increase total industrial energy expenditures by $7-11 billion in 2035. The OBBB will cut the build-out of new clean power generating capacity by 53-59% from 2025 through 2035.

The Senate’s version of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA), which passed yesterday with Vice President J.D. Vance breaking a 50-50 tie, largely maintains cuts to energy-related tax credits and other climate and clean energy programs that have been under consideration by both the House and Senate for the past few months.