Concentrated solar power

China's 15th FYP is the single largest new CSP capacity event globally

China has emerged as the single largest force in new CSP through its 15th Five Year Plan (2026-2030). CNNC's Yumen 700 MW hybrid project, including the world's largest operational Fresnel CSP plant (100 MW), entered operation in September 2024. The 15th FYP target list has 4.8 GW of CSP capacity in planning, with a new minimum CSP share requirement: 200 MW CSP per CSP+PV hybrid project, intended to scale to GW-scale CSP projects by 2030. The policy approach is explicitly hybrid CSP+PV to overcome CSP's standalone cost disadvantage - the CSP module provides dispatchability for high-PV grids. Western Chinese provinces (Gansu, Qinghai, Xinjiang) host most of the new capacity given high direct normal irradiance and available land. The structural read: the next 10 GW of new CSP globally will likely be more Chinese than the previous 10 GW combined.

State of the art (2026)

Concentrated solar power has effectively conceded bulk electricity to PV-plus-battery, whose Moroccan and Gulf bids now undercut CSP roughly five-fold - Noor Midelt I, II and III have all dropped their CSP shares for PV+BESS. The live story is China: the NDRC/NEA "Opinions" of December 2025 target around 15 GW of CSP by 2030, building on 27 grid-connected projects (~1.74 GW) by end-2025 and a 4.8 GW 15th-FYP planning pipeline, almost all as CSP+PV hybrids that supply dispatchability. The second thread is molten-salt thermal storage for industrial process heat (Antora, Rondo, Brenmiller), and a still-nascent solar-fuels tier led by Synhelion, whose DAWN plant in Julich has run since 2024 with a first commercial plant breaking ground in Spain.

Stored heat for industry

Factories that need high-temperature heat are a market for heat storage, and that market is growing largely apart from concentrated solar power. Antora stores heat in solid carbon blocks heated with electricity. Rondo stores it in refractory brick. Neither uses molten salt or mirrors. Our view: storage charged from the electricity grid competes for industrial heat on its own terms, so growth there does not by itself mean more CSP plants. We do not have a reliable figure for how much industrial heat is moving to stored heat.

Solar fuels remain early-stage with multi-year commercial path

Concentrated solar can produce process temperatures (1,000-1,500C) high enough to drive thermochemical reactions - solar-thermal hydrogen, ammonia, methanol, and sustainable aviation fuel. Synhelion (Switzerland; partners Cemex, Synhelion-Lufthansa SAF), 247Solar (US), and Heliogen (US; pivoted from electricity-focus to second-generation focus) are the lead operators. None has yet commercialised at meaningful scale. Heliogen terminated its 5 MW demonstration facility after the design phase to focus on Gen 2. Synhelion expects commercial SAF production from its DAWN plant in Germany at small scale through 2026-2027. The technology pathway is real but commercial scale is 5-10 years away; not a near-term thesis driver.