Spatiotemporal Evolution and Driving Factors of Carbon Emissions in China’s Photovoltaic Industry

Photovoltaic (PV) technology is the core pathway for addressing global climate change and advancing energy system decarbonization, yet the rapid expansion of PV manufacturing capacity has triggered a surge in life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions, sparking mounting concerns. We integrated multisource heterogeneous data from China’s PV industry (2005–2024) to develop a life-cycle accounting framework, which quantifies industrial carbon emissions and their evolutionary patterns across production stages and multiscale spatiotemporal dimensions. We also deconstructed the emission impacts of scale, technology, and structural factors, and predicted future trends. Over two decades, China’s PV industry-wide carbon emissions soared from 0.24 to 205 million tonnes, while product-level emission intensity plummeted from 1,300 to 380 kg CO2eq/kWp. The contribution of technological progress to emission reduction rose from about 3% of the observed increase in emissions in 2005–2007 to nearly 100% in 2020–2024. Spatially, raw material and monocrystalline cell production have shifted inland for cost advantages, while module assembly remains concentrated in coastal hubs like the Yangtze River Delta. Capacity utilization, grid decarbonization, and technical learning will dictate future emissions. Against surging global PV demand, coordinated capacity planning, accelerated tech progress, optimized spatial distribution, and established incentive policies are pivotal to steering China’s PV manufacturing onto a sustainable low-carbon path.