14 DAY TRIAL // According to a report only recently made public by the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA), the global solar capacity now amounts to 101GW.
In other words, it has well succeeded in surpassing the 100GW barrier and, should things continue to unfold in this manner, human society can be argued to be well on the road towards sustainability.
“No one would have predicted even 10 years ago that we would see more than 100GW of solar photovoltaic capacity in the world by 2012,” argued Winfried Hoffmann, currently employed as the president of the European Photovoltaic Industry Association.
Apparently, a total of 30GW of new solar power capacity were installed in 2012 alone, despite the fact that the European market experienced some drawbacks.
As Winfried Hoffmann puts it, “The photovoltaic industry clearly faces challenges but the results of 2012 show there is a strong global market for our technology. Even in tough economic times and despite growing regulatory uncertainty, we have nearly managed to repeat the record year of 2011.”
According to Business Green, this was because countries outside Europe have agreed to up their investments in harvesting solar power, and have ended up installing 13GW of new capacity.
When compared to the 8GW reported back in 2011, this new figure comes as good news indeed.
On the other hand, Europe only managed to install 17GW of new capacity, which does seem a tad disappointing when compared to the 23GW reported in 2011.
As EPIA explains, “This global capacity [i.e. 101GW] to harness the power of the sun produces as much electricity energy in a year as 16 coal power plants or nuclear reactors of 1 GW each. Each year, the world’s PV installations reduce CO2 emissions by 53 million tons.”
Interestingly enough, these figures are merely preliminary ones and rumor has it that, when the final result is made public this coming May, said 30GW figure might witness its being increased by an additional 1-2 GW.