Toward a New Green World | Clean technology manufacturing

November 07, 2025

This is the third paper in a series by CSE addressing questions of climate, trade and development for the Global South in the new green economy, titled Towards a New Green World.

The Global South faces a dual challenge: decarbonising its economies while simultaneously industrialising to meet the demands of growth, employment, and structural transformation. Clean technologies such as solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles are central to this transition. 

Yet manufacturing these technologies has already become a story of concentration and dominance. China commands the bulk of global clean-tech manufacturing capacity, investment, and technological learning, while most developing countries remain confined to low-value assembly, raw material exports, or import dependence.

While clean-tech manufacturing offers opportunities for value addition, employment, and trade competitiveness, structural barriers continue to limit the Global South’s ability to move up value chains and capture meaningful economic gains. Without expanding policy and fiscal space, green industrialisation risks reproducing old patterns of dependency.

This paper examines how countries in the Global South can pursue green industrialization by building clean technology manufacturing capacity amid limited domestic capabilities, high costs of capital, and unequal participation in global trade.

Drawing on case studies from China, India, Indonesia, and Mexico, the paper highlights the trade-offs embedded in different green industrialization pathways.

The paper argues that the Global South cannot replicate past industrialization pathways and calls for renewed and context-specific industrial policy, greater South-South cooperation, strategic engagement with global value chains, and reforms to global trade and financial rules.

Contact:

Avantika Goswami
avantika.goswami@cseindia.org