Recently, the China Electricity Council (CEC) officially announced the list of winners of the 2025 Power Innovation Awards. The project “High-Purity, Low-Carbon Granular Silicon Preparation Technology for Photovoltaic Power Generation Equipment”, led by GCL Group in collaboration with Tianjin University, the Global Institute of Silicon-based Materials, and GCL Technology’s four major granular silicon R&D and manufacturing bases in Xuzhou (Jiangsu), Leshan (Sichuan), Hohhot and Baotou (Inner Mongolia), was honored with the Second Prize in the Technical Achievement Category. This recognition adds another prestigious national-level honor to GCL’s expanding portfolio of technological innovation achievements.

The Power Innovation Award is one of the most authoritative and influential innovation honors in China’s power industry, aimed at recognizing outstanding achievements that advance technological progress and drive industrial upgrading across the sector. This award not only reflects the industry’s high recognition of GCL’s technological strength in photovoltaic silicon materials, but also highlights the Group’s solid progress and leading role in advancing clean, low-carbon energy transformation and supporting China’s “dual-carbon” goals.

As a leading enterprise in the global silicon energy industry chain, GCL has been firmly committed to the development of granular silicon technology since 2011. The award-winning high-purity, low-carbon granular silicon preparation technology represents the culmination of more than a decade of sustained R&D investment and collaborative innovation. Based on the core silane fluidized bed reactor (FBR) process, the technology has achieved three major breakthroughs:

First, industry-leading quality. Products with total metal impurity content (five key elements) ≤0.5 ppbw account for over 95% of output, fully meeting the stringent requirements of high-efficiency photovoltaic cell technologies such as N-type BC, TOPCon and HJT.

Second, a full life-cycle low-carbon production system. Compared with conventional rod silicon, comprehensive power consumption is reduced by more than 75%, water consumption is lowered by 30%, and with the use of green electricity at selected production bases, the carbon footprint has been reduced to as low as 14.2756 kg CO₂e/kg, setting a new global industry record.

Third, efficient and scalable industrialization. Through modular plant design and end-to-end intelligent process control, GCL has established large-scale production capacity totaling 480,000 tons per year across its bases in Jiangsu, Sichuan and Inner Mongolia. Notably, the 120,000-ton project at the Hohhot base was completed within just 10 months, demonstrating strong replicability and scalability of the technology.

The successful development of this achievement was made possible by a robust industry–academia–research–application collaborative innovation ecosystem. During project implementation, GCL Group leveraged its industrial strengths by integrating industrialization resources from four major production bases, including Zhongneng Silicon Industry and GCL Technology (Leshan), ensuring smooth transformation from laboratory research to large-scale manufacturing. Tianjin University provided strong theoretical support in key areas such as high-efficiency catalyst development, process mechanism optimization and impurity control, while the Global Institute of Silicon-based Materials played a critical role as a professional R&D platform, driving continuous technological iteration and upgrading. Through deep multi-party collaboration, a complete innovation chain spanning basic research, technology development and industrial application was formed, laying a solid foundation for the technological breakthrough.

According to the project leader, this award is both a recognition of the dedicated efforts of the entire R&D team and a strong encouragement for GCL’s long-standing strategy of “driving photovoltaics to become a primary energy source through technology.” In recent years, GCL has fully phased out traditional rod silicon capacity and accelerated the industrialization of granular silicon technology, establishing a globally leading integrated industry chain covering silane gas, granular silicon, wafers, cells and modules. The award-winning technology serves as a core technological pillar of this strategic layout. Leveraging this innovation, GCL has not only achieved quality upgrades and cost optimization in photovoltaic materials, but also contributed to carbon reduction across the entire PV industry chain, providing critical support for China’s photovoltaic industry to overcome international carbon trade barriers and enhance global competitiveness.

“Innovation knows no bounds, and now is the time to strive,” the project leader stated. “As the global energy transition enters a critical phase, the shift of renewable energy from a supplementary role to a primary energy source has become inevitable. This award will further inspire innovation across the Group. GCL will take this opportunity to continue deepening R&D in silicon-based materials, pursue continuous breakthroughs toward the goal of ‘zero-carbon, high-quality granular silicon,’ strengthen industry–academia–research collaboration, and accelerate the transformation of innovative achievements into real-world applications—contributing GCL’s strength to the construction of a new power system and the acceleration of clean, low-carbon energy transformation worldwide.”