Solar supply chain Q&A with Andy Klump

Environment China

Today we’re speaking to Andy Klump, the CEO and Founder of Clean Energy Associates, a company that provides services in the field of solar PV and battery storage quality assurance, supply chain management, and engineering. He founded the company in 2008 after working for several years at Trina, in an era before China was even a leader in solar manufacturing. Andy is an expert in world solar supply chains who is frequently quoted in publications such as PV Tech / PV Magazine, as well as in mainstream media.

In today’s episode, we cover:

• The scale of the largest solar players
• The upcoming solar and battery technologies and whether China is a tech leader
• The overall health of the Chinese solar industry
• The main challenges in the industry right now
• Whether other countries have the chance to compete with China on solar given its leading position now
• The relative complexity of he solar supply chain compared to the battery supply chain
• The extent to which materials supply bottlenecks will continue in both industries
• How clean energy will evolve—will it still be central plants, or will distributed RE plus storage play more of a role in China than it has so far?