GB Energy will work with the Solar Stewardship Initiative (SSI) to implement a government amendment prohibiting the use of solar modules linked with forced labour in its energy projects.
Last week, an amendment to the Great British Energy Bill was introduced banning the use of solar products with forced labour in their supply chains from GB Energy projects. This will likely be implemented through work with the SSI, a solar industry initiative founded by trade bodies Solar Energy UK and SolarPower Europe to increase transparency and ethical practices in the PV supply chain.
In an interview on the BBC’s Today programme, energy secretary Ed Miliband said that GB Energy would be able to use modules from companies “that are independently certified as not using slave labour under the initiative of the solar industry.”
Solar Power Portal also heard from a Solar Energy UK spokesperson that GB Energy will “implement the amendment via working with the Solar Stewardship Initiative.”
In the Bill amendment announcement by DESNZ, Chris Hewett, chief executive of Solar Energy UK, said: “By the end of this year, SSI-certified manufacturing facilities will be able to produce 100GW of solar panels per year from independently-assessed sites that are not complicit in forced labour.
“That is around five times more than all of the UK’s existing solar panels put together, more than enough to meet both UK and EU demand. This number will continue to grow.”
So far, the SSI has certified three Chinese solar manufacturing sites under its ESG standard; two from Trinasolar and a third from JA Solar. This standard covers environmental, sustainability and governance criteria like carbon footprint, workplace practices and environmental protection, but is distinct from the Supply Traceability Standard, which requires traceability of silicon material entering and leaving facilities.
Can the solar industry police itself?
The mining and production of raw materials for solar modules – quartz, metallurgical grade silicon and polysilicon – have been exposed to allegations of forced labour in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of China.
Reports, notably from Sheffield Hallam University, have accused the Chinese state of imposing forced labour on the Uyghur Muslim minority population in Xinjiang.
China dominates over 80% of the entire solar supply chain and, by some estimates, as much as 50% of the world’s polysilicon is produced in the XUAR.
As an industry body without legislative power, the SSI requires solar manufacturers to voluntarily submit specific manufacturing facilities for inspection by third parties. Those manufacturers are members of the SSI and, in many cases, were involved in the development of its auditing standards.
This has raised some concern in the international solar industry over the initiative’s ability to independently assess the presence of forced labour in manufacturers’ supply chains.
The European Solar Manufacturing Council (ESMC) told our sister publication, PV Tech, that the involvement of major Chinese manufacturers in consulting on the standards, some of which have had questions raised over their exposure to forced labour, “undermines [the SSI’s] credibility.”
There are other issues. The raw material mining and first parts of the solar supply chain are difficult to trace, and facilities within the XUAR are inaccessible to outsiders. While solar module or cell manufacturers themselves are not necessarily involved in forced labour practices, their suppliers for quartz and MGS are often unknown, as shown in the 2023 ‘Over Exposed’ report from Sheffield Hallam.
Former head of the SSI, Alexia Ruvoletto, told PV Tech earlier this year that the SSI would not accredit a manufacturer they knew to be operating in Xinjiang, where independent assessments were impossible.
However, the issue becomes stickier when considering the practice of “labour transfers”, where the Chinese government is accused of moving forced workers from the XUAR to other parts of China. A 2025 publication from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) found “increased cross-provincial labour transfers” of “surplus” workers for the production of raw materials included in solar modules and batteries.
Speaking to PV Tech, Ruvoletto said that the reality of the solar supply chain is “complicated”, and that a particular manufacturing site can have “material coming from anywhere, literally.” She added that involving the industry in its standards makes the initiative more practical and applicable in the real world.
The SSI has had successes; early this year, the US government added a subsidiary of major Chinese solar manufacturer JA Solar to its entity list for the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. Following its own investigation (and briefly suspending JA Solar’s membership) the SSI found that the facility in question had ceased operations in 2018. It subsequently reinstated the company.
Until the final GB Energy Bill is passed, it is unclear whether the government will impose its own legislative requirements for solar modules or whether it will rely on coordination with the SSI. While undoubtedly a positive step, the industry initiative is not without limitations in addressing the hard-to-reach parts of solar supply and reckoning with the dominance of a few Chinese manufacturers involved in the scheme.
The EU has announced a forced labour ban and a Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive which aim to prevent unethical products entering the bloc.
According to HMRC data, the UK imports more than 40% of its solar modules from China. There are other options. As well as the smattering of UK production capacity, a growing solar manufacturing base in India could supply the UK’s needs, as well as some emerging capacity in the EU.
It is also unclear how big a footprint GB Energy will carve out in the UK’s solar sector. The company announced its first “major” project last month: a £200 million investment into rooftop solar deployments on schools and NHS sites, and its founding statement promises to capitalise on £8.3 billion of “new money” over the course of this parliament.
