SolarPower Europe

The solar sector is no stranger to breaking records. Perhaps the most impressive figure to emerge from SolarPower Europe’s new ‘Global Market Outlook’ is that the global solar sector will reach terawatt scale by 2022 – just four years after the 500 GW milestone was reached. Michael Schmela from SolarPower Europe sets out the reasoning behind this and other key findings in the report.

Renewables are the best way for Europe to decarbonize, the Choose Renewable Hydrogen coalition said this week, prior to the upcoming release of its hydrogen and energy-system integration plan.

The European Commission has positioned the Green Deal at the center of its policy priorities. The goals have been set: climate-neutrality, zero greenhouse gas emissions, and the complete decarbonization of the energy sector by 2050. The stakes are high, writes SolarPower Europe CEO Walburga Hemetsberger, but thus far Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has made good on her promises.

Industry body SolarPower Europe is trying to stay bullish about the lingering effects as the continent starts to come out of lockdown and one analyst has predicted a healthy large scale solar market will carry the US through the crisis.

SolarPower Europe has predicted the volume of new PV capacity added this year will be 4% less than last year’s figure because of the Covid-19 crisis. At the end of 2019, the world had topped 630 GW of solar. For 2020, around 112 GW of new PV capacity is expected, and in 2021, newly installed capacity could be 149.9 GW if governments support renewables in their coronavirus economic recovery plans.

Perhaps it is not surprising a report co-produced by Europe’s solar industry places PV at the heart of a zero-carbon, mid-century energy system on the continent. However, the study does flesh out two out of three scenarios in which becoming carbon-neutral by 2050, or even 2040, could be possible.

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.

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

The economic fallout of the Covid-19 outbreak is yet to be determined but as legislators scramble to establish fiscal support for the EU it is becoming clear the suits in Brussels are not prepared to scrap their hard-won Green Deal plan. Quite the opposite, in fact.