Founder Of China’s Top Solar Panel Maker Rides Global Demand For Renewable Energy

This story is part of Forbes’ coverage of China’s Richest 2021. See the full list here.

Chinese solar equipment manufacturers are making hay on rising global demand for renewable energy. Longi Green Energy Technology, China’s leading producer of solar panels with $8 billion in 2020 sales, has seen first-half revenue surge 74% to 35.1 billion yuan ($5.5 billion) from a year earlier, while profit rose 21% to 5 billion yuan amid a surge in exports. Founder and president Li Zhenguo ranks at No. 37 with a net worth of $13.4 billion. 

Li, 53, entered the solar industry as an outgrowth of his early interest in semiconductors, founding Longi in 2000 with classmates from Lanzhou University and his wife, Li Xiyan, as a supplier of reprocessed silicon materials but later focused on solar. In 2012, Longi raised over $200 million in an IPO on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. As of mid-October, its market cap was $74 billion, buoyed by a 75% increase in its shares in the past year.

With worldwide clients including Adani, Enel and Tesla, Longi has factories in China, Malaysia and Vietnam, and employs more than 60,000 globally. It claims to have produced enough solar panels that, if combined, would have a total generating capacity three times that of China’s Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest power station by output.