LONGi Claims PV Can Beat Nature's 2% Photosynthesis Efficiency

For climate professionals, the most overlooked vulnerability is the food system's dependence on photosynthesis. LONGi's pitch at UNCCD COP17 targets that gap directly: use cheap photovoltaic electricity to bypass natural photosynthesis and manufacture starch from CO2. If the company's claimed efficiency gains over nature's ~2% baseline hold, solar would become a food-security asset in desertifying regions, with major implications for adaptation finance and land-use policy.

At the UNCCD COP17 in Ulaanbaatar, LONGi used the global desertification summit to reframe solar power as a food-security technology rather than only a decarbonization tool. In an August 24, 2026 release distributed via PRNewswire, the company announced that founder and Chief Technology Officer Li Zhenguo had detailed two pathways at a side event co-hosted by Tsinghua University's School of Social Sciences and the China Green Foundation. Because the material is a press release, the technical claims should be treated as the company's own forward-looking statements, not independently verified results.

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LONGi's pitch at UNCCD COP17 targets that gap directly: use cheap photovoltaic electricity to bypass natural photosynthesis and manufacture starch from CO2.

The timing and venue are deliberate. COP17 is being held in Ulaanbaatar from August 17 to 28, 2026, in a country where desertification and extreme weather are direct threats to pastoral agriculture. Li's framing connects two systemic crises: climate change is degrading land and destabilizing food production, while solar costs have fallen enough to make PV a plausible energy input for synthetic food value chains. According to the release, Li has published a Perspective article in Nature Sustainability titled 'Photovoltaics for food security,' which gives the pathways an academic platform.

The first pathway is the more radical. It uses PV electricity to electrolyze water into green hydrogen, which is then combined with captured carbon dioxide to synthesize green methanol. That methanol is converted into starch through oxidation and polymerization. LONGi argues this route can surpass the roughly 2 percent solar energy utilization efficiency of natural photosynthesis, meaning a PV-powered factory could, in theory, produce food-calorie precursors with far less land and climate exposure than conventional crops.

The second pathway is less explicitly quantified in the release but is embedded in the side event title 'From Desert to Asset — Comprehensive Solutions for Integrated PV-Based Ecological Restoration.' It points to using PV installations as anchors for ecological restoration of degraded or desert land, converting marginal landscapes into productive assets that can support food systems. LONGi positions these two routes—synthetic starch and integrated PV-based restoration—as complementary.

For the solar industry, this is a demand-creation narrative. PV manufacturers face price pressure and oversupply; reframing solar as infrastructure for food security could open new markets in agri-food, green hydrogen, CO2 utilization, and land restoration. It also aligns with long-term climate adaptation financing and UNCCD priorities. For LONGi specifically, the peer-reviewed Nature Sustainability article and COP17 side event support brand differentiation as a technology leader beyond modules.