The event also had participation from the world’s solar PV industry association Global Solar Council (GSC) with CEO Sonia Dunlop sharing the views of the 97% of the world’s PV market that it represents. One major goal that the GSC is working towards is tripling the global renewable energy capacity by 2030 that it announced along with the Global Renewables Alliance in 2023 during COP. In 2024, the world achieved 2 TW of total installed solar PV capacity (see Global Solar PV Installations Achieve 2 TW Milestone). Getting to the 2030 target has its own share of challenges, both financial as well as political and geopolitical. High cost of financing for PV and storage projects is one particular challenge, she said, especially for developing and emerging markets. The GSC has launched an International Solar Finance Group that brings together various stakeholders including the World Bank and the private investors to find a solution at the global level. Other challenges Dunlop listed include health and safety (H&S) incidents in utility scale projects for the 7 million in solar jobs at present; cannibalization, curtailment and negative prices to counter which the GSC has launched a grid task force, best practices while pushing for electrification. For solar trade barriers, it is pushing for dialogue; for recycling, agri-PV and lowering carbon footprint, GSC is looking into setting global standards. To address traceability and ESG related challenges for the PV sector, the council mentions the Solar Stewardship Initiative in which it is involved. The overall objective of the GSC, explained Dunlop, is to promote sustainable PV deployment at the global level to achieve the 8 TW target by 2030 by addressing various challenges. Panel discussion Moderated by the Executive Director of TaiyangNews Michael Schmela, the panel discussion with all the 3 presenters revolved around the learnings from the last year, and how the market will progress from here on. Jenny Chase of BloombergNEF saw a successful year for solar in 2024 as lots more was deployed, newer markets came up including highflyer Pakistan, while Henning Schulze of JA Solar reflected on the intense competition that will make solar a more structured market in the future as some companies are forced to exit. Patent fights also brought the attention on technology. From the policy perspective, Sonia Dunlop of the Global Solar Council sees the challenges getting more complex with regard to market design, regulatory concerns, flexibility, reform of electricity markets, batteries, storage, among others. Video recordings of the presentations and the panel discussion are available on the TaiyangNews YouTube channel. These can be accessed here. Meanwhile, block your dates for the next TaiyangNews event Solar Technology India on April 10 and 11, 2025. Details will follow soon.
