This edition of the SSI Insider Blog comes from SSI CEO, Rachel Owens, reflecting on her first five months in the role, and what she’s learned along the way. 

“It’s been just over five months since I began my tenure as the inaugural CEO of the Solar Stewardship Initiative. After 17 years working at the intersection of climate action, sustainability, and corporate responsibility, I was keen to lead an effort critical to the just transition – an energy revolution underpinned by respect for human rights, the environment, and ethical governance.  

Since the Initiative’s launch in October 2022, the SSI has been working around the clock to create the advanced organisation we have today. The journey before April 2025 was already buoyed by key milestones, like the establishment of two foundational Standards, covering ESG and Supply Chain Traceability, the onboarding of seven world-leading assessment bodies to conduct our independent audits, and growing our membership to 40 organisations.  

With such a mission, it’s needless to say that the SSI’s latest chapter in the last five months has continued its rapid pace. With the summer respite soon coming to an end, I’m excited to take the opportunity to introduce myself and share the SSI’s latest updates.  

Setting Standards 

Just as I joined, the SSI was marking the first ESG certifications issued to solar manufacturing sites. This was the culmination of three years of work creating the robust SSI Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Standard. The Standard went through the SSI development process, which follows ISEAL best practice (the global membership organisation for credible sustainability initiatives); written by supply chain and sustainability experts, enriched by public multi-stakeholder consultation and feedback, and tested via pilot audits. The current ESG Standard has almost 100 criteria that assessors will investigate through various means, including up to 14 hours of unsupervised worker interviews per site.  

By April 2025, third party independent auditors had assessed six manufacturing sites leading to six ‘Silver’ certifications, meaning these sites had high compliance with the Standard, with 5 minor non-conformances or less. To explain, a minor non-conformance could be something like an unclearly marked fire exit. This was an important signal to me as I arrived that the industry was approaching assessments seriously.  

As we marked the implementation of the ESG Standard, we were also launching the SSI Supply Chain Traceability Standard, which underwent the same development process as its predecessor. While the first Standard audits activity directly at the site level, the second assesses how well sites know their supply chains and how transparent they are. This is a key step. When companies know which sites and suppliers are active in their supply chain, we can create a more complete picture of global solar supply chains. My first weeks were spent working with the team, ensuring the audit planning was going smoothly. As of July 2025, we have ESG-certified 65 GW of solar module production, over 20 GW of cells production and over 10 GW of ingots & wafers production capacity – and in our pipeline we have over 100 GW of ESG and Supply Chain Traceability audits including sites across the solar PV supply chain.  

Aiming High 

With our flagship Standards being rolled out on the ground, we were able to set our sights on the future. In joining the SSI, manufacturing members commit to subjecting two of their sites to assessment within the next 12 months (or 12 months from the introduction of any new Standard) and to continuously increasing the number of sites assessed.  

Now we’re asking our members to go even further. From 1 April 2026, Manufacturer members must report all of their production sites, their capacity, their exported capacity to Europe*, and their planned certification dates. These new reporting responsibilities allow us to set SSI certification targets for manufacturers. By January 2026, manufacturers must have at least two additional production sites certified to both of our Standards. By January 2027, at least 80% of module shipments to Europe must be produced in sites certified to both Standards – this grows to 100% by January 2028.  

For me, the acceptance of these targets by our Board and membership mark a significant step forward for the Initiative and the sector. SSI membership represents 70% of global solar manufacturing, and this huge market segment will only be using SSI certified sites to serve Europe’s solar demand.  

Good Governance 

Alongside the work of our hard-working Secretariat team, the engine behind the latest SSI developments is our new Board. Since May 2025, the SSI is officially a multi-stakeholder initiative – which is an important distinction from an industry initiative. The new Board has 12 voting seats, made up of four equally weighted blocs:  

• Buyers (Industry)  

• Manufacturers (Industry) 

• Civil Society (Non-industry) 

• Institutional Stakeholders & Independent Experts (Non-Industry) 

Coming from years of working to advance human rights and sustainability within civil society and philanthropy, it was very important to me to establish a balanced, effective board with equal representation between industry and non-industry. Non-industry board members are also elected from their peers – non-industry representatives from the Stakeholder Advisory Group. The Governance rules are advancing well and aim to strike a balance between engagement with, and independence from, industry. The SSI also has an ‘emergency break.’ Any voting bloc can pause an SSI action should they see risk to the principles of the SSI.  

In Public Policy 

We aren’t the only ones marking our successes. The impact of the SSI has caught the attention of policymakers. Just weeks after I joined in April 2025, the UK Government added welcome clauses to their draft energy transition law creating a new national renewable energy company, GB Energy, to ensure that their transition is just and upholds robust ESG standards, pointing to the SSI as a tool to support the laws implementation. (This was the first public statement I issued in my new role.)  

Since then, the UK government has highlighted the role of the SSI in its official UK Solar Roadmap, outlining how the government will work with us to ensure that the solar installed in the UK is made responsibly and transparently. The developments with the UK government show the true potential of the SSI. The SSI is not designed to replace law. We whole-heartedly support and encourage strong supply chain sustainability and due diligence laws – like the EU Forced Labour Ban. Legislation is the single most critical tool to cleaning up supply chains. With good law in place, the SSI can provide further accountability and support businesses in understanding their compliance needs and their routes to compliance.  

Driving Impact  

However, it’s not been completely plain sailing. Worthwhile missions rarely are. There is still a lot to be done to raise awareness about the SSI’s work and how the initiative functions. We continue to prioritise partnerships with stakeholders, from labour unions to civil society to multilateral development banks. We also need to bring in new downstream companies and those upstream in the solar supply chain.  

We are a small team with big ambition and strong demand for our expertise – whether training auditors, supporting SSI company members, or engaging with policymakers and civil society. With the autumn just around the corner, we will be hard at work growing our resources and ensuring that the SSI keeps delivering more – more audits, more certifications, more impact. I look forward to working with all our stakeholders to advance an energy transition which is not only clean but also just.”

*Europe in this context refers to the European Economic Area + Switzerland + UK