The British government says a new state-owned renewable energy company will not be allowed to source solar panels made with Chinese slave labor.
The government announced Wednesday that it will introduce an amendment to ensure that the planned company, Great British Energy, will not have slavery in its supply chains.
China is the dominant global player in the renewable energy market including solar energy. The BBC cited customs data that Britain imports more than 40% of its solar photovoltaics from China.
A key component is polysilicon sourced from the Xinjiang region in China’s far west, where minority Uyghur Muslims have faced persecution including use of their forced labor.
In 2021, the U.S. Labor Department listed polysilicon as a product made with forced labor in China in violation of international standards.
The British government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer had initially rejected an amendment to the Great British Energy Bill to include provisions to prevent purchase of solar panels made with slave labor.
However, on Wednesday, it changed track.
“Great British Energy will act to secure supply chains that are free of forced labor, under an amendment brought forward by the government today,” the Department of Energy Security said in a news release.
It said a new measure in the bill “will enable the company to ensure that forced labor does not take place in its business or its supply chains.”
The opposition Conservative Party described it as a “humiliating U-turn” for Ed Miliband, the secretary of state for energy and climate change, but it was also supported by some members of the ruling Labour Party.
Rahima Mahmut, executive director of the activist group Stop Uyghur Genocide, welcomed the amendment, posting on X that it was a “massive step toward justice.”
Forced labor is on a long list of serious human rights problems that have been documented in Xinjiang and is cited along with the incarceration of an estimated 1.8 million people in detention camps since 2017 and forced birth control by the U.S. government and others as evidence of genocide of the Uyghurs.
China denies the rights abuses.
Edited by Mat Pennington.
