I. The retirement wave has arrived

China's cumulative installed photovoltaic capacity has reached11.1billion kilowatts, surpassing coal power to become the largest power source. This is a figure worth being proud of.

Originally calculated based on a 20-year design life, the first batch of photovoltaic power stations was only gradually entering the retirement cycle, but policies in many parts of the country promoting equipment replacement have directly brought forward the wave of photovoltaic retirement significantly. Since 2024, many provinces have intensively introduced energy equipment renewal policies, kicking off a large-scale early retirement of photovoltaics. Zhejiang has made it clear that by 2027 it will complete the retirement of more than 10 0MW of photovoltaic installed capacity, and Huzhou, Jinhua, Quzhou, Wenzhou, Shaoxing, Ningbo, Hangzhou, Pinghu and other places have simultaneously implemented special actions to promote replacing old modules with larger ones for projects that have been in operation for more than 10 years, with single-panel power below 250 watt and conversion efficiency below 18%-20%; Pinghu has further introduced subsidy policies, granting technical renovation subsidies at 0.2 CNY/ watt for projects above 1 MW, in operation for 10 years, and with efficiency below 18%. Tangshan, Hebei proposed completing the retirement of more than 100MW of photovoltaic installed capacity, while Shaanxi supports the upgrading and renovation of old power stations over 10 years old. By the end of 2025, Guizhou went a step further, with provincial-level policies encouraging for the first time the renewal and replacement of photovoltaic projects that have been operating for 8 years or more, marking the official lowering of the industry's retirement threshold from the traditional 10 years to 8 years, accelerating the release of retired existing modules.

Industry data also confirms that the retirement wave has arrived ahead of schedule: according to data from the China Materials Recycling Association, by the end of 2024, the total volume of retired photovoltaic modules nationwide had reached 4.9GW, equivalent to about 340,000 tons in weight. According to forecasts by the photovoltaic green supply chain, under the scenario of regular retirement in China, the cumulative retired volume of photovoltaics in 2030, 2040 and 2050 will reach 100 million tons, 12 million tons, and 55 million tons respectively; under the early retirement scenario, they will reach 4 mllion tons,  23 million tons and 66 million tons respectively.

But the reality is: the industry is still in a state of having demand but lacking a system, and the market is flooded with a large number of unqualified workshop-style dismantling operations. Such workshops generally adopt crude methods such as open-air incineration, rough crushing, and arbitrary burial, selectively extracting only high-value precious metals such as silver, while directly discarding bulk materials such as silicon wafers and glass. This not only results in an extremely low overall material recovery rate, but also emits toxic gases such as hydrogen fluoride and sulfur dioxide, causing excessive levels of heavy metals such as lead and cadmium in soil and groundwater, seriously damaging the soil and groundwater environment, and causing huge waste of high-value resources.

More importantly, some small workshops and traders operate through private cash transactions and without issuing invoices, giving rise to an industry quotation system excluding tax （cash）. Relying on the advantages of being tax-free and bearing no environmental protection costs, small workshops dare to raise recycling prices to compete for supply, and a large number of traders have also poured in accordingly, generally preferring to sell goods to small workshops that offer higher prices and do not require reverse invoicing. This seriously distorts fair market pricing, creates the chaos of bad money driving out good money, and greatly squeezes the survival and profit margins of compliant enterprises.

Jinghuan Jiayuan wants to change this.

II. The only one in the country: centered on recycled silicon material technology

RESOLAR is currently the only full-chain photovoltaic recycling company in the country centered on recycled silicon material technology.

The key to this positioning lies not in“recycling”, but in“refining”. Many people can dismantle panels, but RESOLAR can“refine” the dismantled materials back into a reusable state.

Behind this lies nearly twenty years of accumulated experience in silicon material reuse. The founder's family has been deeply engaged in the field of photovoltaic cell recycling for many years, accumulating self-developed solvent formulas and processing equipment experience, enabling the company to process recycled cells in batches, stably, and at low cost to a purity exceeding 6N level.

What does6N level mean? A purity of 99.9999%, which can be directly reused in the production and manufacturing of high-efficiency photovoltaic cells.

Simply put: many people can dismantle, but RESOLAR can“refine”.

On March 3, 2026, six departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued guiding opinions on promoting the comprehensive utilization of photovoltaic modules, making it clear that by 2027 a group of backbone enterprises for the comprehensive utilization of waste photovoltaic modules should be cultivated, achieving a cumulative comprehensive utilization volume of 250,000 tons of photovoltaic modules, thereby setting clear goals for the standardized and leading development of the industry.

Corporate financing is one of the important ways for enterprises to grow bigger and stronger and achieve technological iteration and capacity expansion. As the global wave of photovoltaic retirement arrives, photovoltaic recycling has become a new track for capital competition, with leading enterprises at home and abroad all accelerating positioning with the help of capital. U.S. SOLARCYCLE, OnePlanet Solar Recycling, and France's ROSI have successively obtained large amounts of financing and policy funds for technology R&D and plant building.

In July,2025, RESOLAR announced the completion of an A round financing of tens of millions of yuan, jointly invested by investment platforms under SPIC Ronghe Technology, CITIC Environment Industry Fund （Trustwin Capital） and others, while Xuanxi Capital, as a seed-round investor, continued to increase its investment. What these institutions deeply engaged in energy and green industries value is precisely RESOLAR's technological capability to“turn waste panels into resources”. With the support of capital, RESOLAR is implementing a 10,000-ton production line, refining its globalized process route, while also participating in the formulation of industry standards and winning multiple authoritative industry honors, thus joining the front ranks of global photovoltaic recycling. The entry of capital not only helps technology-based enterprises build leading advantages, but also forces the industry to accelerate reshuffling and clearance.

III. Capacity is being rolled out globally

After its technological capabilities were verified, RESOLAR began replication and expansion.

Fengyang, Anhui, is the company's first“testing ground”. Here, it independently invested in and built the country's first 10,000-ton production line, achieving mass production of multiple categories such as recycled glass, aluminum, solder ribbons, silicon materials, and silver. This is a full-process production line of“physical dismantling+thermal decomposition separation+wet-process impurity removal”, with proprietary technical support at every step. At present, the Anhui factory is expanding its production.

Overseas, relying on self-developed core technologies for green dismantling and silicon material cleaning, and adapting to environmental regulations and recycling standards of various countries, RESOLAR is steadily expanding: in Southeast Asia, Japan and South Korea, the United States, Australia, the Middle East, India and other countries, localized processing networks have been established through technical cooperation to undertake existing module retirement needs; it has also deeply studied recycling systems in various European countries and exported complete high-value recycling process solutions.

As the global recycling network gradually takes shape and capacity covers the world's major photovoltaic power station clusters, RESOLAR is no longer just a raw material supplier, but an indispensable part of the green closed loop of the photovoltaic industry chain.

IV. Compliance builds high barriers, and ESG becomes a required course for enterprises

The photovoltaic recycling track in which RESOLAR operates is ushering in a brand-new inflection point of strong policy supervision, rigid compliance constraints, and market-oriented credit. A dense rollout of multiple policies in environmental standards, legal accountability, tax supervision, platform regulations, and credit-based bidding is accelerating the exit of unqualified small workshops lacking environmental assessments and engaging in tax evasion, and the industry is officially entering an era of compliance-driven reshuffling.

In January 2026, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued the Technical Specification for Pollution Control in the Recycling and Treatment of Waste Photovoltaic Equipment, clearly requiring that the entire process of waste photovoltaic equipment, from dismantling, collection, transportation, storage, and disassembly to comprehensive utilization and terminal disposal, must follow the principles of reduction, resource utilization, and harmlessness, and give priority to processes and equipment with low energy consumption, high recovery rates, and low pollutant emissions, thereby raising industry entry thresholds from the technical source and forcing crude dismantling models out of the market.

Article 523 of the Ecological Environment Code of the People's Republic of China, officially promulgated in March 2026, specifically clarifies that retired photovoltaic modules must undergo refined and harmless dismantling and disposal; at the same time, it strictly requires entities generating industrial solid waste to verify the qualifications and technical capabilities of entrusted recycling enterprises, sign standardized contracts, and stipulate environmental responsibilities. If they illegally entrust disposal to unqualified small workshops, they will face fines ranging from 10 万 to 100 万 yuan, and in serious cases may be ordered to suspend operations and close, thereby cutting off supply channels to small workshops at the legal level.

Tax and invoice supervision is also tightening simultaneously, blocking gray transaction space. In March 2026, Dezhou, Shandong took the lead in implementing the invoice-upon-payment model for renewable resource recycling, followed by comprehensive promotion by banks and tax authorities in Zibo, Zhejiang, Guangxi, Guizhou and many other places; in the same month, the State Taxation Administration introduced six major measures to specially rectify tax-related chaos in illegal招商引资 and crack down hard on the “invoice economy”. In April 2026, the State Taxation Administration issued a positive and negative invoice list, strictly enforcing the integration of the four flows of contracts, logistics, funds, and invoices. Traditional cash transactions, private transfers, and oral contracts are all left with no room to hide, and the survival logic of small workshops not issuing invoices, not paying taxes, and using private accounts is completely invalidated.

The industrial trading side is also being standardized and upgraded. On April 22, 2026, the CRSRC New Energy Circular Network officially went online. The platform implements strict qualification review of buyers, and by May 19, the total transaction volume had reached 318 million CNY, with 58000 tons of recycled resources, and annual transaction volume is expected to exceed 1.5 billion CNY. As supply sources concentrate on professional platforms, the circulation space for unqualified scattered operators and small workshops is further compressed.

Combined with reforms in corporate credit and bidding systems, the industry landscape is undergoing deep reshaping. Relying on the corporate comprehensive credit evaluation system in March 2026 and the new credit management regulations in the bidding field in April （draft for comments）, photovoltaic recycling bidding is bidding farewell to the crude model of highest-price-wins, and shifting toward new standards of credit access, graded evaluation, and compliance priority. National-level official public credit ratings will become an important reference for bidding, and high-credit-quality enterprises can enjoy policy dividends such as reduced bid bonds, higher advance payments, and faster payments.

As early as June 2025, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology had already issued a special implementation plan, making it clear that by 2027 a green and low-carbon standard system for photovoltaic modules would be fully established, with a focus on improving carbon footprint accounting rules. Under the combined force of the environmental code, technical specifications, tax inspections, platform supervision, and credit-based bidding, the photovoltaic recycling industry is bidding farewell to wild growth. In the next 2-3 years, a large number of small workshops without environmental assessments, without qualifications, and involved in tax evasion will be accelerated out of the market, and market share will continue to concentrate toward backbone enterprises like RESOLAR that are technologically leading, fully compliant across the whole chain, and have excellent credit.

From the perspective of the industry's long-term development, ESG has long changed from an optional “bonus item” for enterprises into a rigid “must-answer question”. In 2025, global sustainable investment assets had exceeded 45 trillion U.S. dollars, and ESG compliance performance directly determines corporate financing costs, market ratings, and core competitiveness. RESOLAR's business model is precisely a deep practical implementation of the ESG concept in the field of new energy circularity: through standardized recycling and high-value refining, it reduces solid waste emissions and lowers dependence on mineral resources such as primary silicon materials, creating stable commercial value while protecting the ecological environment. It is no longer a traditional recycling processing plant in the conventional sense, but a key infrastructure that completes the closed loop of the photovoltaic industry chain and solves the “last mile” of green energy development.

V. Twenty years of painstaking effort is the real moat

RESOLAR's barrier is not some single“secret formula”, but a combination of“time+full chain+scale”.

First is time. Nearly twenty years of experience in silicon material reuse—this kind of“painstaking effort” cannot be replicated in the short term simply by spending money. Refining recycled silicon materials is extremely difficult; various trace impurities must be deeply removed to reach photovoltaic-grade purity. This involves complex solvent formulas and equipment parameters, which are RESOLAR's most core technical foundation.

Second is full-chain capability. From the physical dismantling of modules and chemical separation to the deep refining of silicon materials, and then directly producing usable 6N grade silicon ingots——RESOLAR has achieved a“full cycle” from retired photovoltaic panels to raw materials for brand-new photovoltaic panels, rather than only doing one part of it.

Finally comes scale and globalization capability. From a 10,000-ton demonstration line to global capacity planning at the scale of hundreds of thousands of tons, RESOLAR is moving from“single-point breakthrough” to“global operations”.

These three together are its true moat.

VI. ESG can be a good business

In traditional business logic,“environmental protection” often means“additional cost”. But RESOLAR is proving one thing: ESG can be a good business.

What it does follows a very simple logic: retired photovoltaic panels are not garbage, but misplaced resources. A waste panel contains silicon, silver, copper, aluminum, and glass. If technology is used to completely dismantle, separate, refine, and send them back into the industrial chain, then they are resources. If crude methods are used to landfill or crush them, then they become pollution.

RESOLAR chose the former, and turned it into a sustainable, scalable, and profitable business.

Under the country's “dual carbon” goals, photovoltaic installed capacity is still continuing to climb. This means that the total amount of retired modules will only keep increasing, and the value creation space for RESOLAR will also become larger and larger.

In the last mile of the photovoltaic industry chain, RESOLAR is carving out its own trajectory.

If you are also starting a business, or are planning to begin——

feel free to talk with us: bp@brightvc.com