The pulse of clean trade.

Values are nominal.

+60% transformer unit values since 2020 · 8 of 11 peaks in 2021–2023

No price deflation is applied. Where technology prices collapsed, solar modules and lithium-ion cells above all, dollar trade understates volume growth. Where equipment prices rose instead, transformer unit values up more than 60 percent since 2020, dollar trade overstates it, and transmission’s record high is partly price. Eight of the eleven chain peaks date to 2021–2023, the commodity and freight spike; below peak does not mean below-peak volume.

Panel 06 divides trade value by shipped weight for five HS6 products. Unit values mix price with product composition, a known IMF caveat, and dollars per kilogram are a floor on the true price decline because efficiency per kilogram improved. Solar’s code also contains LEDs, so its close-up uses China’s exports, the module mode of the code; the large-transformer code sits outside the green dictionary and is read directly. The quoted module and battery-pack prices are external figures (IRENA/pvXchange, BloombergNEF), cited, not drawn from this data.

One table, four positions, one window.

11% upstream in the headline · 2012–2024 every panel · 2% median threshold

Membership comes from the NZIPL green dictionary, projected to an HS12-native table (data/products.csv) with four positions per chain: upstream minerals, midstream processing, downstream goods, and the production equipment that builds the factories. A product in several chains counts once, in its most downstream chain, so chains sum to the total exactly, in every panel. Upstream counts in the headline total, 11 percent of the 2024 figure, a deliberate departure from the Atlas root’s manufactured convention, and is drawn as its own tier.

Every panel runs 2012 to 2024, thirteen years on one HS nomenclature. An HS02 reconstruction of the earlier years was tested against the HS12 series over the thirteen overlap years; six chains and the all-chain total diverged past the 2 percent median threshold, so every chain is quoted on the same window and no pre-2012 extension ships. The test is documented in the methods appendix.

Dual-use inflation.

40% of the electrolyzer chain is equipment

The dictionary maps generic machinery, polymers, and metals into chains at stated weights, and several baskets remain upper bounds: 40 percent of the electrolyzer chain is production equipment swept in through an HS92 catch-all code, and wind components include generic gearing and castings. Treat levels in those chains as ceilings. The drill-down names every code, and the ranking and partner panels carry a per-chain composition note, so the reader can judge each basket. Where a code’s technology share has a reviewed measurement, the drill-down prints it beside the code.

One gap runs the other way. Undenatured ethanol (HS 220710), the code carrying most fuel-ethanol trade including nearly all of Brazil’s, is absent from the dictionary, so the biofuel chain understates those flows. The omission is filed with the dictionary’s maintainers.

Two registers, measured where an instrument exists.

6 of 11 chains carry a coverage verdict · 22 codes with published measurements · 362 of 653 memberships read

A components register decomposes six chains into named components with cost shares from national-laboratory and agency sources, and an attribution register estimates, code by code where an instrument exists, how much of a code’s trade is the technology, from tariff-line trade data, end-use series, or market-size comparisons, in descending strength: half to four fifths of the steel-towers code is wind towers, depending on the market (US 53.8 percent, EU 78.8). Wind, solar, and transmission pass a coverage bar set at 80 percent of each chain’s filed cost ceiling; batteries, EVs, and heat pumps fall short, covering 57.6, 51.1, and 30 percent of their cost denominators against bars of 60, 80, and 48. Reviewed measurements print in the rankings drill-down as a measured share; they annotate, and no figure on this page is rescaled by them.

Seven memberships are parked: the measured bound contains the 20 percent materiality floor, so the row records its interval and settles nothing. Transformer parts read 12.1–21.2 percent, solar glass 19.9–24.0, PV frames roughly 10–40, EV power electronics 11–25, small vapour turbines 10–23, the cathode-and-electrolyte heading at least 7.6, and refined rapeseed oil near zero to 50. The adjudication registry behind the tiers has read 362 of 653 dictionary memberships; while coverage is incomplete no attributed total ships, and the headline stays a full-value footprint. The adjudication that narrowed the dictionary is written up in the appendix linked below.

A footprint, wider than the IEA figure.

$200B IEA, narrow definition · 16% of world merchandise exports

The IEA puts world trade in clean technologies narrowly defined near $200 billion in 2023, under 1 percent of world goods trade. The eleven-chain basket here counts full value chains, including electric vehicles, and equals about 16 percent of world merchandise exports ($24.4 trillion in 2024, WTO). The two answer different questions; quote them accordingly.

Export shares also miss what is made and installed at home. China’s solar export share of 23 percent coexists with a production share near 80 percent, and the chain basket is several times broader than PV-specific products, which dilutes the share further.

Two chains carry a note everywhere.

$970B EV downstream, an upper bound · 870390 the residual code

The EV chain’s finished vehicles travel under HS 870390, which also covers some conventional cars; the dictionary’s own EV code exists only in the 2022 nomenclature and maps back to this broader parent. Plug-in hybrids share codes with conventional cars and stay outside. Read the EV downstream level, $970 billion in 2024, as an upper bound.

With upstream counted, Kazakhstan’s uranium exports edge Russia’s fuel and reactor trade at the top of the nuclear chain. The ferronickel flow that once distorted nuclear now sits in geothermal, where it lifts Indonesia to fourth among exporters. Both notes travel with their chains.

Conventions of the trade data.

X = M mirrored by construction · TWN reports as Other Asia, nes

Taiwan reports as “Other Asia, nes” in the underlying BACI data and is labeled Taiwan here. The source mirrors and harmonizes both sides of every flow on an FOB basis, so world exports equal world imports by construction and a world total can be quoted from either side.