A cartography of the clean industrial base.
Every clean technology is built from a stack: processed materials, components, the equipment that makes them, and the finished good. The Atlas measures that stack in trade data, on a manufactured basis, for 155 economies since 1995. It reports which part of each chain a country makes, and which part it still imports.
Stories · 27 country–technology pairs
India assembles solar modules and imports at every stage of the chain above them.
On the manufactured basis India imported $13.6B of solar goods in 2024 and exported $5.3B. All four stages run negative: polysilicon and wafers at $3.0B, assembled modules at $2.0B, cells and glass at $1.9B, production equipment at $1.3B. Predicted competitiveness is 0.67, rank 8 of 155, a score built from export structure that reads presence at the module rung rather than upstream fabrication.
A deficit at all four stages.
On the manufactured basis India imported $13.6B of solar goods and exported $5.3B in 2024, a deficit of $8.3B. Every stage runs negative. Polysilicon and wafers account for $3.0B of the gap, assembled modules $2.0B, cells and glass $1.9B, production equipment $1.3B.
Imports concentrate on one supplier; exports do not.
China supplies $7.6B of India's $13.6B in solar imports, 56 percent of the total. Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia follow at $0.7B to $0.9B each. Exports are more dispersed: the United States takes $2.1B, then the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Russia at $0.3B to $0.4B each.
India climbs from the top — modules first, then cells.
Read the chain left to right: copper ore, polysilicon, wafers, cells, modules. India runs a surplus only at module scale; every step before it bleeds dollars. The capability is real, but it's tethered to upstream imports.
Twenty-two years of compounding imports.
The deficit didn't widen suddenly. From 2003 onward, every solar phase has scaled — but raw materials and processed materials scaled fastest. The post-2017 inflection in module exports is real. So is the post-2020 surge in inputs needed to make them.
India is good at solar, but not at making solar.
The capability score combines export specialisation, scale and complexity. India is solidly mid-pack — ahead of every European peer except Germany, but a full order of magnitude behind China and the Vietnam–Malaysia–Thailand assembly belt.
Each circle is one economy's manufactured-solar exports against predicted competitiveness. India sits high on the capability axis at mid-scale export volume, the position of an economy exporting downstream products from a chain whose upstream it buys.
Each axis is India's share of world exports at that stage, scaled against the world average. India is above average at the finished module and at production equipment, and below average at cells and glass.
Adjacent stories & angles.
A related story, a route into the underlying data, and a blank Compose brief.
Every country and technology in the green dictionary.
Ten clean technologies across 155 economies: 1,548 pairs that record manufactured trade in 2024, each with its predicted competitiveness, its position in the value chain and its ten-year export path. Filter, sort, and open the ones with a story.
CVCE green dictionary · 322 manufactured HS-6 products · 2024 reference year
| # | Country · technology | Value-chain position | Capability | Exports · 10yr | Exports 2024 · 5yr | Net 2024 | Open |
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Draft a story in three questions.
Pick a country, a technology and an angle. The atlas pulls the data, drafts the narrative and lays out the charts. You annotate, edit and share.
Pick any of the 40 country–technology pairs in the catalog. Every draft is built on CVCE trade data, predicted-competitiveness scores and BACI partner flows; 27 pairs carry fully authored editorial prose on top.