Feed-in tariffs drive majority of global solar photovoltaic markets, but unsubsidized markets growing

IEA PVPS' 18th “Trends in Photovoltaic Applications” report, finds that feed-in tariff policies were responsible for 61% of the global PV market in 2012.

The International Energy Agency's (Paris) Photovoltaic Power System Programme (IEA PVPS) finds that solar photovoltaics (PV) have reached a point where it is beginning to develop regardless of financial support, but that feed-in tariffs remain the primary market driver.

IEA PVPS' 18th “Trends in Photovoltaic Applications” report, finds that feed-in tariff policies were responsible for 61% of the global PV market in 2012. However, it also finds that “purely competitive” PV installations including self-consumption represented 12% of the market during the year.

2012 was also the second year in a row where PV was the largest source of new generation capacity in Europe. Overall, PV met roughly 2.6% of Europe's electricity demand. Australia also gets more than 1% of its electricity from PV, but Japan, China, and the United States are blow 1%.

IEA PVPS estimates that 29.3 GW of PV capacity was installed in IEA PVPS nations and other major markets, which brings the total installed global capacity just below 100 GW at the end of 2012.

However, the PV industry produced 36 GW of PV modules in 2012, with a production capacity of 58 GW, which IEA says explains the large fall in PV prices.

The full report is available for download here.