By the end of 2016, China had increased its solar PV capacity by nearly 800 times, with more than 77 gigawatts currently installed.
China’s solar dominance is only going to keep growing, according to the IEA report.
As Dr. Paolo Frankl, one of the lead authors on the report, said on a call to reporters, “In one year, China will install the equivalent of the total history of solar development in Germany.”.
The Renewables 2017 report takes a deep dive into renewable energy deployment across all industries and throughout the world, but the dominance of solar PV stands out.
As a whole, renewables represented nearly two-thirds of new electricity capacity additions last year, far outshining coal and natural gas growth.
Over the next half decade, the world will install half as much renewable energy as the current entire global capacity of coal power.
Rather, it would slow PV deployment in the U.S. at precisely the time the rest of the world is pivoting aggressively to solar. »