China's solar boom shows green policy can drive growth and cut emissions.

A VoxDev article by Ignacio Bañares-Sánchez, Robin Burgess, Dávid László, Pol Simpson, John Van Reenen, and Yifan Wang highlights how China’s solar energy expansion has been driven by targeted industrial policy.

The authors show that local subsidies for solar production and innovation played a central role in the sector’s rapid growth, helping to cut global solar costs by over 90% since the early 2000s and making the technology competitive with fossil fuels.

The study finds that these policies not only accelerated the global transition to clean energy but also generated domestic economic gains that likely exceed their cost, demonstrating that green industrial policy can simultaneously support economic growth and tackle climate change.

View the article on VoxDev.