The 2022 China Silicon Industry Conference opened on Dec 29 in the city of Baotou – located in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region – at a particularly opportune time.

It comes as the well-known "steel city" and "rare earth capital" is seizing the major historical opportunity – presented by the goals of peak carbon emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060 – and is accelerating the layout of silicon industry clusters focusing on photovoltaic silicon.

The conference is regarded as being the most influential of such events in China's silicon industry. More than 60 industry leaders and 400 industry veterans attended, to deepen their communications and cooperation.

In recent years, Baotou has continued to improve the scale and quality of its eco-friendly silicon industry and has developed the crystalline silicon photovoltaic sector alongside the growth of the entire city.

Tongwei, Risen Energy and another dozen leading enterprises have started operations there.

They have developed an annual polysilicon production capacity of 300,000 metric tons, monocrystalline silicon output of 133 gigawatts, slices of 46 GW and modules of 8 GW – with Baotou joining the first batch of cities in China with an output value of more than 100 billion yuan ($14.37 billion).

Wang Qing, deputy director of the Industry Development Department of the China Photovoltaic Industry Association, is very pleased. That's because many leading enterprises in the industry have gathered in Baotou for their entrepreneurial development – and the local government has provided support for enterprises in terms of electricity costs and policy guarantees.

Wang added that Baotou had rapidly moved into the top echelon in the industry.

A number of industry experts and practitioners said that in the future Baotou would take the conference as an opportunity to achieve higher quality development. That’s by following the market development trends, by adapting to the needs of technological change and doing a good job in providing industry support links.