Covid-19

Even as global PV forecasts fall, tax equity dries up and unemployment rises, investor Jim Spano believes the right type of government stimulus could not only help the solar industry recover – but drive it to new heights.

Industry body SolarPower Europe hosted a webinar to consider how the global public health crisis will affect solar. While workers and materials are still available, industry experts are concerned about the state of the financial sector. Banks could become more conservative and raise the cost of capital for renewables projects.

Grenergy was this week due to ship 400,000 face masks to Latin America as European developers today voiced a fear project finance will become increasingly difficult to find as the coronavirus lockdown continues.

As the Covid-19 pandemic takes the world by storm, global supply chain operations remain disrupted, and solar exhibitions that were held in the first quarter of the year saw fewer manufacturers displaying their latest products.

pv magazine rounds up the latest Covid-19-related stories likely to affect the world of solar and energy storage.

Mercom Capital Group has issued a report tallying up financial activity in the solar sector between January and March 2020. The sobering result is that cash flows are down by considerable margins on all metrics.

The Global Solar Council has launched a survey to assess the impact of the Covid-19 emergency and understand potential outcomes for the global solar energy sector.

As Chinese PV manufacturers are now on the way to fully utilizing their production capacities, it is becoming increasingly clear how much coronavirus containment measures will affect global demand. Wood Mackenzie expects a decline in residential PV demand and a shift in investment to commercial projects, which is why it now only expects 106 GW of capacity additions this year.

In a recent conversation with pv magazine, Luca Pedretti – the COO of Swiss software developer Pexapark – said that a new mindset is now required for solar and wind PPAs. The market has not completely stalled, he argued, noting that prices have already started to stabilize.

Volatility in the oil markets has played out in the news recently, driven by the Covid-driven collapse in demand and a war for market share between Saudi Arabia and Russia. A G20 meeting is to be held to try and find a way to cut production. As states and the oil majors look to shore up the price though, it’s possible that the coronavirus crisis might be what topples the fundamental driver of the current economic order.