This is the first of a series of Bruegel-Rhodium Group quarterly briefings to compare clean tech deployment and manufacturing trends across Europe, the United States and China. It follows a first series of four pieces comparing trends across Europe and the United States.
Click here to access Bruegel's European clean tech tracker dataset
Investment in clean technology manufacturing facilities is falling worldwide. After peaking at $70 billion in 2023, quarterly manufacturing investment more than halved to $35 billion by end-2025. This is despite global demand for clean technologies growing rapidly. Since 2020, solar installations have more than tripled in China (+250 percent), while more than doubling in the United States and European Union (+132 percent and +125 percent, respectively). Also since 2020, electric vehicle (EV) sales in China have grown nearly tenfold, in the US fourfold and in the EU threefold. These three economies host 86 percent of total clean-technology manufacturing investment since 2018.
In the context of growing demand, why is global clean-tech manufacturing investment slowing? We examine the three largest clean-tech sectors: solar, batteries and EVs. The headline fall largely reflects an oversupplied market, especially falling Chinese investment in solar photovoltaic manufacturing (Figure 1) – in this respect the decline is not a cause for concern. However, the drop in battery manufacturing investment that has followed abrupt US policy changes is worrying. Amid the slowdown, European investment remains largely stable.
Read the full report on Bruegel's website.