Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech The ongoing war on Iran may have drastically reduced the amount of oil passing from West Asia to the rest of the world, but there is a bright side, literally: surging solar panel sales. According to Yale Environment 360, China has reached a record high for solar panel exports as suppliers scramble for oil alternatives. In March, one month into the US-Iran war that began on February 28, the People’s Republic doubled the number of solar panels it was exporting, distributing 68 gigawatts of photovoltaic cells and silicon wafers. That’s an astonishing spike across one month — for context, the US has only an estimated 70 gigawatts of new solar generating capacity scheduled to come online across all of 2026 and 2027. According to data from the think-tank Ember Energy, China exported more solar capacity in March alone than the entire nation of Spain installed in the previous decade. Per Ember, the banner month traces back to increased …