During SNEC 2025 in Shanghai, Global Solar Council (GSC) CEO Sonia Dunlop joined TaiyangNews’ Michael Schmela for an exclusive interview as part of the TaiyangNews & SNEC Solar Leadership Conversations 2025 series.
TaiyangNews: The GSC recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. What does that mean for solar?
Sonia Dunlop: For us at the Global Solar Council, as the world's solar PV industry association that brings together the whole industry from all over the world, we really want to celebrate everything that's happened in the last 10 years – since the creation of the Paris Agreement, since the exponential growth in solar deployment and battery storage deployment as well all over the world, but also really focus on what could potentially happen in the next 10 years. What is possible with solar over the next 10 years, because it's over the next 10 years that we are going to come into our own as a technology.
We are looking at the 2025 to 2035 period, where we are going to see the percentage of global electricity generated by solar and stored with battery storage grow from the 7% it is today, maybe to 10, 20, 30, maybe even 40% over the next decade. We want to think about the impact that we can have as a technology. The impact in terms of energy access and electrifying communities that don't currently have access to electricity, the impact in terms of bringing down people's bills, and the impact, of course, in terms of decarbonizing electricity grids and creating those resilient grids with the unique services, the grid-forming, the grid-stabilizing services that we can provide, that we want to develop further over the next 10 years.
TaiyangNews: It took almost 70 years to grow from zero to a TW. Then it took around 2 years to double, more or less. Last year, we added 600 GW globally, with China alone accounting for a market share of 55%. What can be done to tap the potential solar has, much faster? What is slowing us down?
Sonia Dunlop: As you say, we added 600 GW last year; maybe add close to 700 GW this year, but then it might plateau and flatten out for a year. At the Global Solar Council, we have identified 4 main challenges, and we are working on all 4 of them. The first is finance and the cost of finance, where we can see that in many developing markets around the world, in particular, the cost of finance is holding projects back. This means that projects do not get built.
We are very vulnerable to the cost of finance, because all of our costs are upfront in the project development process. Hence, we have created the International Solar Finance Group to bring together the big private investors, the public investors, and the industry to work together to address those barriers within our sector, in particular. It will also work with the international solar allies to create a global solar facility.
The second big challenge is grid integration. How do we integrate large shares of solar electricity into grids around the world? Of course, that looks very different if you're in sub-Saharan Africa or Southeast Asia than if you're in Western Europe or America. But we have established a Global Task Force, and we'll be publishing a position paper making recommendations on how to enhance the flexibility and resilience of grids, and how solar can be integrated into grids in the most effective way, making the most of those grid-forming and grid-stabilizing attributes. At the same time, what electricity market design reforms have to be put in place in order to make it happen.
The third big challenge is related to the workforce, the people who are needed in order to install this solar. Remember, every solar panel has to be installed with a pair of human hands. We have created the Global Solar Training Standards Initiative to create a global baseline in terms of health and safety training, and technical, engineering and electrical training for utility-scale solar construction.
And finally, of course, supply chains, where we, as the Global Solar Council, as the Global Solar PV and Battery Storage Industry Association, provide a platform for dialogue to bridge across different countries and help resolve those issues and find consensus on supply chains, manufacturing and trade.
TaiyangNews: What's the Global Solar Council's message for COP30 in Brazil this year?
Sonia Dunlop: The message for us is that solar can deliver. Solar can deliver almost everything the Paris Agreement set out to achieve, both the reducing of emissions to get to that 2°C of global warming limit, and also delivering the adaptation to climate impacts and the resilience to climate impacts that will make households, villages, communities resilient to any kind of natural disaster that comes. We are almost the secret sauce of what made it possible for governments to commit to the Paris Agreement in the first place, but also what will make it possible for governments to go further and faster in their energy planning and in their national climate plans in the future.
We are coming to COP saying we are ‘the’ technology – and I really do believe this – the one technology that can essentially save the planet and deliver this Paris Agreement, and that can help the Paris Agreement survive the current difficulties with the US on the verge of pulling out of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
But it's not just that. What we bring to COP30 in Belém, Brazil, is essentially good news. We are the solution. We are the cheapest electricity source ever known in the history of civilization. We, together with battery storage, can deliver the vast majority of the global energy transition in the Global North and, crucially, in the Global South.
We are the leading Global South renewable solution. And so, we come with good news, with solutions, with a story of success and a promise of so much more to come over the next 10 years.
TaiyangNews: Well said, Sonia. That's what's needed in these challenging times. Thanks a lot.
