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Bridging the Gap: Managing Surplus Capacity for Global Market Stability and Climate Progress

Bridging the Gap is a high-level policy and research initiative led by the Geneva Platform for Resilient Value Chains to address one of the defining tensions of the energy transition: China’s industrial surplus capacity. As Chinese firms dramatically expand production of solar panels, batteries, and other clean technologies, concerns are growing over the destabilizing impacts on global trade, industrial development strategies elsewhere, and the health of future green innovation. But while surplus capacity is widely acknowledged, cooperative solutions remain elusive.

This project seeks to de-escalate polarizing narratives and offer pathways toward stability and cooperation, alongside effective diversification. It brings together Chinese, European, and U.S. experts and policymakers in a series of off-the-record roundtables to foster mutual understanding and identify opportunities to align industrial strategies without splintering global clean energy markets. Drawing on Geneva’s unique position as a hub for both diplomacy and trade governance, the project will facilitate discrete dialogue among key players while anchoring those discussions in data-driven supply chain and policy research.

The initiative will:

  1. Convene leading scholars, officials, and industry experts in confidential dialogues to map shared concerns and areas for constructive engagement;
  2. Produce actionable research and strategic insights in collaboration with academic partners on how effective diversification can be achieved without entirely splintering global markets.
  3. Publish a flagship report on global industrial surplus capacity and trade in clean technologies, framing options for balancing market openness, domestic capacity building, and accelerated decarbonization.

Bridging the Gap recognizes that the stakes are high: trade tensions around surplus capacity could undermine not only industrial policy goals but also the pace of the global energy transition. By creating a safe space for honest conversation and forward-looking policy design, the project aims to reinforce global supply chain resilience through dialogue on markets, diversification, and collaboration, rather than radical decoupling.