清洁能源的关税和供应链挑战2025

EMERGING TECH RESEARCHTariffs and Supply Chain PitchBook Data, Inc. Nizar TarhuniExecutive Vice President ofResearch and Market Intelligence Challenges in Clean Energy Paul CondraGlobal Head of PrivateMarkets Research James UlanDirector of EmergingTechnology Research Tariffs are compounding the existing challenges facedby clean energy supply chains Institutional Research Group Analysis PitchBook is a Morningstar company providing the most comprehensive, mostaccurate, and hard-to-find data for professionals doing business in the private markets. John MacDonaghSenior Research Analyst,Carbon & Emissions Tech andClean Energy Techjohn.macdonagh@pitchbook.com Key takeaways pbinstitutionalresearch@pitchbook.com •Clean energy development and adoption are exposed to significant risk due togeographically concentrated supply chains. The falling cost of low-carbon energytechnologies such as solar, wind, and lithium batteries has accelerated theiradoption. However, their dependence on critical minerals and components fromgeographically concentrated supply chains—particularly in China and SoutheastAsia—creates exposure to geopolitical and operational disruptions. PublishingDesigned byAdriana Hansen Published on June 5, 2025 •US tariffs are impacting the country’s ability to develop and adopt clean energytechnologies. Recent tariffs from the US are affecting clean energy supply chains,increasing costs, and limiting access to key components for the energy sector.The uncertainty for investors and project developers further complicates supplychain management and long-term planning across a broad range of technologies,including renewables, energy storage, and clean fuel generation. •VC investment in clean energy will be affected by this uncertainty, but thereare also opportunities for VC-backed companies to develop technologies inenergy storage, recycling, and mineral extraction. VC investment is fuelinginnovation and development in areas such as lithium battery recycling, directlithium extraction, subsurface resource detection, and nonlithium batterychemistries. These emerging technologies have the potential to reducesupply chain dependencies, lower environmental impact, and support theglobal clean energy transition. •The geographic concentration of clean energy hardware production, mineralextraction, and mineral processing represents a risk for the global clean energytransition. Production of clean energy hardware—particularly solar modules,batteries, and electrolyzers—is highly concentrated in Asia, and scaling upmineral production and manufacturing from low levels in other regions is costly.Some critical minerals have very few alternative supply chains due to limitedviable mineral deposits, and others depend on high-volume processing of otherminerals because they are produced as byproducts of other mineral extraction/refining processes. Overview The clean energy transition continues to accelerate, driven by falling costs forlow-carbon energy technologies; the continued electrification of transportation,manufacturing, and the built environment; higher consumption of energy producedby low-carbon technologies; and increased energy demand from growing datacenterenergy requirements. Low-carbon energy technologies are varied, and include: •Intermittent renewable energy sources such as solar and wind, which are highlymature, with good global availability, a low levelized cost of energy (LCOE), andrapidly developing talent pools. The falling LCOE of these technologies meansthat in many cases they are the most viable option when adding new energygeneration capacity, regardless of low-carbon goals. •Dispatchable low-carbon energy sources, including renewable sources such asgeothermal, hydropower, wave and tidal energy, plus nonrenewable low-carbonpower sources such as nuclear fission and fusion. Renewable energy is increasingly being used as a tool to improve energyindependence for countries without their own conventional energy deposits, asrenewable assets are not dependent on importing energy commodities. Energystorage is also growing in adoption, allowing easier integration of intermittentrenewable energy sources into power networks—smoothing out some of theiroutput variability—and also optimizing energy usage in buildings and facilities forcommercial, industrial, and residential applications. Although we see VC-backedcompanies developing a broad range of technologies for energy storage, new energystorage capacity additions tend to involve lithium battery projects because of thematurity and relatively low cost of the technology. Even incorporating the need for energy storage to balance the output of intermittentrenewables, lower-carbon forms of energy generation can now be cost competitivewith fossil fuel facilities. However, the commodity inputs—construction materials,base metals, and critical mineral resources—are different, exposing cleanenergy technologies to very different supply chain risks than the