Wind turbines and solar panels in this aerial photograph taken near Fuxin, China, on November 16, 2020.
Photographer: Qilai Shen / Bloomberg
Photographer: Qilai Shen / Bloomberg
Even after Covid-19 wreaked havoc on almost everything else, the new year begins with an accelerated growth in renewable energy. “2020 was a year of positive surprises for the environment in a way that few predicted,” says Jeff McDermott, head of Nomura Greentech. “It was a revolutionary year in sustainability and infrastructure.”
Growth is likely to continue in 2021, fueled in part by last year’s key inflection points. China has now pledged to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, putting the world’s largest solar and wind energy market on the road to increasing facilities by starting its next five-year plan. Some analysts have begun to predict that the US energy sector is approaching the peak of natural gas. This would leave space for solar panel installations to take advantage of the continuous boom.
Explore dynamic updates from Earth’s top data points
To understand what is driving the expansion of renewable energies, as well as what can prevent it, we have put together a guide to the biggest recent developments and the main forces that shape the global renewable market in 2021.
America’s solar energy broke both good and bad records – in the same year
Residential facilities in the U.S. fell nearly 20% in the second quarter of 2020 from the first – the largest on record – when the pandemic led to requests for home stays, according to Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industries Association. At the end of the year, however, the sector recovered and the country added 19 gigawatts of total solar energy, based on December projections by Wood Mackenzie and SEIA. That would be a little more power than it existed across the country in Colombia at the end of 2019, according to BloombergNEF.
Capacity increase
Solar energy installations in the USA in the first nine months of 2020 reached a record
Source: Wood Mackenzie and Solar Energy Industries Association
Facilities doubled in China
Even after the government blocked large areas of the country earlier this year, companies still wanted solar energy. The country’s leading solar industry group expects a record increase in business over the next five years, following President Xi Jinping’s announcement in September that the country will zero carbon emissions by 2060.
Solar Outbreak
China’s photovoltaic industry sees new installations firing by 2025
Sources: BloombergNEF; China Photovoltaic Industry Association
A battery explosion in the USA
New battery storage capacity in the U.S. more than doubled in the third quarter of 2020 compared to the second, according to Wood Mackenzie and the U.S. Energy Storage Association. Projects in California were a major reason for the increase.
Battery surge
The USA deploys most of the storage in a single quarter, thanks to California projects
Source: Wood Mackenzie and US Energy Storage Association
Spain emerges as a solar plant
Electricity from solar farms in the country with the greatest solar potential in Europe grew by more than 60% in 2020 compared to 2019, generating more than 15,000 gigawatt hours of energy, according to data from the country’s network manager, Red Electrica. Although the sunny southern European country still has about a third of its installed solar capacity as the leader of the EU, Germany, the Spanish sector is expected to grow by about double that of Germans over the next two years, according to BloombergNEF.
Spain Solar
Europe’s sun-rich country saw an increase in solar energy
Source: Red Electrica de Espana
Renewable energies are the main fossil fuels in European energy
During the height of the pandemic, when general energy demand fell, the share of renewable energy in the grid increased in Europe. About 40% of electricity in the first half of 2020 in the European Union came from renewable sources, compared with 34% of plants that burn fossil fuels, according to environmental group Ember.
Green Boost
Renewable energy beat fossil fuels in the EU for the first time
Source: Ember
UK runs out of coal for more than two months
A 67-day period became Britain’s longest coal-free period since the Industrial Revolution and helped make 2020 the country’s greenest year for its power grid. Britain will completely eliminate polluting fuel by 2025, as an increasing share of its energy comes from wind farms. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has also promised to ban new gas-powered cars by 2030 and spend $ 1 billion this decade to capture carbon emissions from at least two industrial centers.
British Coal
Coal power in the UK is almost a thing of the past
Source: Elexon
Solar installations have fallen in India – by far
India’s indebted utility companies were further hurt by the world’s biggest blockade in 2020, leading to a 72% drop in solar installations and the slowest addition of wind power in more than a decade. On the positive side, however, bids to develop new solar projects have continued to break new records – meaning that, once the energy company’s finances are in order, it is a good bet that solar energy will be the cheapest option . Another good news was that the clearer sky when factories and streets were empty meant that there was not much pollution blocking sunlight, allowing for the highest generation of panels in the country.
Australia’s grid is overloaded
High energy prices and abundant sunshine spurred a love affair with rooftop solar energy, with about 29% of homes now equipped with panels. This is wreaking havoc on power utilities, with daytime demand for grid electricity dropping to record levels in three states in 2020, leaving expensive plants running well below capacity.
Solar panel makers face rising prices
An explosion and flood closed two Chinese polysilicon factories, a crucial material for photovoltaic cells, causing prices to rise 75% in less than two months. Solar glass prices have also skyrocketed as the use of bilateral or bifacial panels has increased demand, while capacity has been restricted by limits to highly polluting glass factories in China. Rising costs so far have not affected sales, but they have spread through the solar supply chain, with module prices experiencing the first quarterly increase since 2015. This could be bad news for project developers who offered low prices assuming that equipment costs would continue to follow their long historic decline.
Dear polysilicon
Solar panel material prices have skyrocketed due to factory outages
Source: PVinsights
A new risk of climate change
Although power cuts caused by the risk of forest fires have contributed to increasing US homeowners’ interest in roof and battery systems, northern California in September learned that a cruel irony: the smoke of a great fire covered the sun and therefore the solar on the roof withered.