Russia’s battle in opposition to Ukraine has proven that vitality safety is now not nearly entry to fuels, pipelines, and enormous energy stations. It additionally will depend on photo voltaic panels, batteries, and different distributed vitality gear that may preserve houses, companies, and significant providers working when the electrical energy grid is underneath assault.
Paradoxically, a lot of the gear serving to Ukraine preserve the lights on comes from China.
Beijing has maintained shut strategic ties with Russia. But by way of commerce and world provide chains, Chinese language-made clear vitality applied sciences are serving to Ukraine scale back the vulnerability created by Russian assaults on its vitality system.
Russia’s assaults uncovered the vulnerability of Ukraine’s extremely centralized energy system. The Worldwide Power Company (IEA) estimated that round half of Ukraine’s era capability was occupied, broken or destroyed throughout 2022-23, whereas round half of its giant community substations had been broken by missiles and drones. After one other wave of assaults in spring 2024, Ukraine misplaced an additional 9 GW of era capability, leaving it with solely round one-third of its pre-war capability. On January 20, 2026, one other main Russian assault on vitality infrastructure left nearly half of Kyiv with out warmth and energy.
Such assaults turned Ukraine’s giant, mounted vitality belongings into main factors of vulnerability, making vitality decentralization an more and more necessary supply of resilience. Consequently, there was a resurgence of solar energy in Ukraine.
The nation was already a big photo voltaic market earlier than Russia’s full-scale invasion, rating ninth globally for brand spanking new photo voltaic capability addition in 2019. However deployment and commerce collapsed after February 2022. Chinese language module exports to Ukraine fell from 83.9 MW in February 2022 to only 7.5 MW in March, and totaled solely 15.8 MW in 2023.
Since then, the market has recovered. The Photo voltaic Power Affiliation of Ukraine estimated that round 800 MW of photo voltaic was put in in 2024 and 1.5 GW in 2025. Companies and households have been putting in solar energy to cut back their dependence on the grid. Distributed photo voltaic PV, typically mixed with battery storage, has subsequently grow to be an necessary a part of Ukraine’s wartime vitality safety.
Worldwide organizations, such because the IEA and the Middle for Strategic and Worldwide Research, have not too long ago examined Ukraine’s vitality reconstruction, protecting points equivalent to decentralization, solar energy, battery storage, financing, and electricity-market reform. Nevertheless, these studies inform us remarkably little concerning the sources of the gear wanted for this transition.
Specifically, the function of Chinese language-made gear on this shift has obtained a lot much less consideration. In line with the IEA, China accounts for round 85 p.c of worldwide photo voltaic supply-chain manufacturing capability and round 80 p.c of lithium-ion battery manufacturing capability. Its share in some particular segments is even larger – for instance, China provides round 95 p.c of worldwide PV wafer capability.
At the moment there isn’t any authoritative estimate on the particular share of Chinese language-made gear in Ukraine’s photo voltaic and battery markets, not least as a result of some merchandise attain Ukraine by way of third nations, worldwide procurement channels, and assist packages. Nonetheless, given China’s dominance of those provide chains, Chinese language-made gear is prone to have performed an necessary function in Ukraine’s decentralized vitality growth and can in all probability proceed to take action.
This raises an intriguing query. Does China’s place in these provide chains give Beijing vital leverage over Ukraine? Might China, significantly given its shut relations with Russia, use entry to wash vitality gear as a coercive geopolitical instrument?
Provide chain focus undoubtedly creates structural affect. However as I argued in an article in September 2025 in The Diplomat, it doesn’t translate mechanically into the type of coercive energy traditionally related to oil and gasoline.
In Ukraine’s case, three elements are significantly related.
First, clear vitality gear strikes by way of complicated worldwide industrial networks. A considerable quantity of Chinese language merchandise can attain Ukraine not directly by way of third nations, distributors, worldwide procurement, and assist packages. This makes it troublesome for Beijing to manage the last word vacation spot or finish consumer. Blocking such flows would require a lot wider restrictions and can be commercially and politically troublesome.
Second, weaponizing clean-energy provide would impose appreciable prices on China’s personal industries. It might expose Chinese language firms to larger regulatory and compliance dangers whereas strengthening Western arguments for provide chain diversification, home manufacturing, and “friend-shoring.” In the long term, that might speed up exactly the discount in dependence that Chinese language producers would like to keep away from.
Third, such restrictions would contradict Beijing’s said strategy to the Russia-Ukraine battle. China has repeatedly referred to as for selling peace talks whereas sustaining civilian commerce. Intentionally proscribing applied sciences necessary to civilian electrical energy provide can be troublesome to reconcile with that place and will carry diplomatic and reputational prices.
In the case of clear vitality, China’s industrial dominance doesn’t essentially translate into the power to train political management. International industrial networks can considerably constrain a authorities’s capability to find out the place clear applied sciences in the end go and the way they’re used.
An additional query is how the Chinese language authorities and Chinese language firms may take part constructively in Ukraine’s ongoing vitality transformation and eventual reconstruction.
The potential market is substantial. The IEA estimates that Ukraine would want so as to add round 4 GW of distributed photo voltaic PV every year by way of 2030 to construct a extra decentralized and safe electrical energy system whereas assembly its nationwide vitality and local weather goals. It will additionally require an extra 5.6 GW of battery vitality capability by 2030.
For Chinese language firms, the alternatives lengthen past exporting extra photo voltaic modules and batteries. There’s appreciable scope for cooperation in system integration, vitality administration, know-how switch, joint undertaking growth, native meeting and manufacturing, and operations and upkeep.
However such involvement wouldn’t be easy. Chinese language corporations must navigate wartime dangers, technical requirements, financing constraints, provide chain safety screening, and an more and more complicated geopolitical setting. Firms in search of to take part will subsequently have to create worth domestically, construct trusted partnerships, and adapt to an institutional and regulatory setting, significantly as Ukraine turns into extra deeply built-in into European vitality markets.
Ukraine’s expertise gives a broader lesson concerning the geopolitics of fresh vitality. Nations nonetheless want safe gas provides and dependable energy grids, however in addition they want entry to the gear used to supply and retailer electrical energy domestically. China’s lead in manufacturing offers it appreciable affect, although not full management. As soon as photo voltaic panels and batteries enter world buying and selling networks, they will contribute to vitality safety in ways in which transcend the intentions or expectations of their nation of origin.
