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Featured in Mountains to climb – 05-2026

Conflict as catalyst

War in the Middle East is adding pressure to an already turbulent solar and storage supply chain, but is likely to accelerate the energy transition in the long run, writes Rystad Energy analyst Fei Chen.
By
Fei Chen
While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to soaring gas prices for much of Europe in 2022, Spain’s day-ahead power market did not follow the European TTF gas price benchmark. The Iran war has had a varying impact on power prices in different markets. | Image: William Rudolph/Unsplash

Chinese solar exporters started 2026 navigating two significant headwinds. Silver prices surged in January, pushing module manufacturing costs up sharply relative to levels seen in mid-2025. This squeezed cell and module producers, already under pressure from years of manufacturing overcapacity. Compounding this, the widely anticipated removal of a 9% export tax rebate on solar wafers, …

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