“There is an underlying assumption that being a renewable energy company means you are sustainable – it creates a false assumption about the impact of your operations and value chain. The world is learning more and more that there is a shadow side to the energy transition; particularly with respect to the social and environmental impact of the supply chain of raw materials and components that must be addressed.”
– Manuella Appiah, Environment, Social and Governance Manager, Sunrock
Where are Solar Panels Made?
Systems change is a complex and complicated process. It takes countless stakeholders, interventions, and programs. But one of the most important steps that is often overlooked or skipped is understanding where you are starting from, so you can understand and measure the change you are making. Put another way: you can’t solve problems you can’t see. You can’t restructure a system if you don’t know what it looks like in the first place.
The just transition is a vast systems change movement, with renewable energy often at its center. However, there is no comprehensive dataset mapping the complete supply chains that lead to the creation of renewable energy assets, like solar panels and wind turbines. We don’t know all the factories and production locations connected to their development, which means we don’t know all of the stakeholders affected or positioned to influence how the system works. If we can’t see that system, how can we change it?
What is a Just Transition?
According to the United Nations: “A just transition, broadly defined as ensuring that no one is left behind or pushed behind in the transition to low-carbon and environmentally sustainable economies and societies, can enable more ambitious climate action and provide an impetus to attaining the Sustainable Development Goals.” It is the center of conversations and strategies for many companies, foundations, climate change initiatives, and more.
What does this mean for renewable energy supply chains? Let’s look at a solar panel, for instance. What would a just solar panel look like, with its many components, metals and materials coming from around the world? At the very least, this solar panel and all of its parts would be developed free of human rights abuses (like forced labor, poor working conditions, or poverty wages for workers) and without harm to the habitats and communities in which it was produced (are mines and factories contaminating the communities in which they are located?). This is already an incredibly tall order, given the complexity of global supply chains. At the very best, a truly just solar panel would be one in which all the stakeholders and communities touching its development were equitably engaged in decisions around where/how it was made to ensure that they are safeguarded, supported, and proactively designing their own futures.
To be able to do this, we need to be able to see renewable energy supply chains and who is connected to them – and we need this to be done in a way that can lead to equitable engagement and collaboration.
Mapping Renewable Energy Supply Chains
That’s why we’ve been working to create the first open, accessible, collaborative map of renewable energy supply chains (learn more about OS Hub’s model to understand how this would work).
How are we doing this? Earlier this year, our entire team spent a targeted six-week sprint finding and consolidating dozens of publicly available datasets with the help and guidance of stakeholders in the renewables sector. We saw Sunrock join OS Hub as the first renewable energy company contributing their supply chain data to our open, public platform (read more about how transparency fits into their just transition strategy). And we’ve been running a series of workshops with multi-stakeholder initiatives and companies, to help drive further engagement and data from the sector.
You might be asking yourself: If your goal is to have stakeholders share data themselves so that they can collaborate, why start by consolidating publicly available data? As an open data platform working across sectors and supply chains, we’ve worked with sectors at various levels of maturity when it comes to supply chain transparency. When a sector is just beginning in this journey, the idea of transparency can feel very theoretical, intangible, and overwhelming. To alleviate this, we’ve found that being able to demonstrate what the data is and how it looks—with real, current datasets—can go a long way in making progress. It’s how we started in apparel and grew to become the industry standard tool in that sector that we are today.
Want to see the data in action?
• Check out the 1450+ supply chain locations we’ve mapped from publicly available datasets on renewables. Data highlights include:
→ Sheffield Hallam Forced Labor Lab Polysilicon List: Polysilicon is one of the raw materials that contribute to solar panels’ supply chains, and its production has been tied to forced labor in China. This list from Sheffield Hallam Forced Labor Lab shows companies named in media and academic reports as engaging in labor transfers or other XUAR government programs. Learn more about that dataset here.
→ Nauru Locations & Angola Resources: Nauru and Angola represent countries heavily dependent on producing natural resources. For Angola alone, their petroleum industry accounts for almost 75% of the country’s revenue. Similarly, renewable projects connected to extradition, like solar and wind sectors, are on the rise. That is also reflected in the first production locations uploaded on OS Hub for both Nauru and Angola, coming from the renewable energy sector.
• See how a renewable energy company’s supply chain data can look in OS Hub and in a map embedded on their website.
• New to OS Hub and want some tips on navigating this data? Here’s a guide for searching OS Hub.
What’s next?
The foundation for an open map of renewable energy supply chains is here. Now, let’s keep building on it. If you know of other publicly available datasets, send them our way. And if you’re a part of the renewable energy supply chain—whether a company, production location, civil society organization, or service provider—share the list of production locations you work with (it’s free!). The more stakeholders who contribute data, the more opportunities for collaboration there are and the more voices brought to the table for just transition work.
OS Hub is a non-profit platform that relies on philanthropic support to sustain the world’s most complete, open and accessible supply chain map. Join us in powering the transition to safe and sustainable supply chains by making a donation today.
