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Solar modules: Morally questionable green electricity?
Photo: zjsight / zjsight / Imaginechina / AP
After the US government imposed sanctions on Chinese solar companies from Xingjiang Province on charges of forced labor, German solar companies are also coming under pressure to act.
The White House had called forced labor an "integral part" of China's oppression of the Uyghurs and other minorities - and therefore last week banned imports from five Chinese solar companies that are suspected of using them.
Now concern is spreading among the German solar companies, who are also said to have used material from the suspected companies, including Hoshine Silicon Industry and a division of GCL New Energy Holdings.
As the »Handelsblatt« reports, systems from Chinese producers who used material from the suspected companies were also predominantly installed in this country.
At least 90 solar companies worldwide are said to be affected
"In the past, we too have carried out projects with modules from companies whose upstream value chains are now partially suspected of being forced labor in the Chinese region of Xinjiang," Jochen Hauff from BayWa Re told the newspaper.
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The energy company EnBW informed the »Handelsblatt« that it had confronted its two main suppliers with the allegations that »neither the suppliers nor us have any knowledge of human rights violations of this kind in the supply chain«.
The fact that German corporations are being criticized for their relationships with Xinjiang is nothing new. A list had already caused a sensation in 2019, according to which around a dozen German companies had production in the controversial region.
The solar industry is particularly affected by these supply relationships.
Around 45 percent of the so-called polysilicon worldwide, a preliminary product that can be found in almost every solar cell, comes from Xinjiang.
According to a study by Sheffield Hallam University and the consulting firm Horizon Advisory, forced labor is likely to be used to produce this intermediate product.
According to this, quartz mines also sometimes use forced labor, as do isolated production facilities for wafers.
According to the study, the preliminary products then reached the whole world via international supply chains.
In total, they used at least 90 solar companies.
The Chinese Solar Association has repeatedly denied the accusation of profiting from forced labor in Xinjiang as unfounded and stigmatizing.
According to "Handelsblatt", the Federal Association of the German Solar Industry and the European Solar Association Solar Europe see the "complete ban on products from Xinjiang or the application of tariffs as in the USA" as critical. They are therefore calling for the transparency of the global value chain to be improved together with politicians within the framework of the new German Supply Chain Act. In addition, more own production capacities would have to be built in Europe.
The Uyghurs in Xinjiang are now systematically suppressed and monitored. More than a million people from this Muslim minority are imprisoned in re-education camps. The so-called "China Cables" had brought frightening details about this gulag system to light. The Beijing government denies allegations of repression and harassment and claims to promote economic development and fight radicalism.
An estimated ten million Uyghurs live in China, most of them in Xinjiang.
The majority of them are of Islamic faith and feel economically, politically and culturally oppressed by the ruling Han Chinese.
After they came to power in 1949, the communists incorporated the former East Turkestan into China.
The Beijing government accuses Uyghur groups of separatism and terrorism.
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