On July 20, 2023, the seminar on the development review of the photovoltaic industry in the first half of 2023 and the situation outlook in the second half of 2023 held by the China Photovoltaic Industry Association was held in Xuancheng, Anhui Province. During the meeting, Tan Youru, analyst of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, reviewed the development of the global photovoltaic industry in the first half of the year and the outlook for the second half.

Tan Youru said: "We see the global PV market demand, will continue to hit record highs. Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates that under the optimistic scenario in China, the global new PV capacity may reach 380GW."

In the global market in 2023, there will be more than 31 markets with new PV installed capacity of more than 1GW, five more than in 2022. This year is very optimistic about the South African market, the vast majority of the photovoltaic market will maintain a strong growth trend until 2030. The growth of rooftop photovoltaics is particularly strong.

In 2022, due to the shortage of natural gas, European electricity prices will get a crazy increase. Although the European Union has introduced a policy to limit electricity prices, photovoltaic and wind developers are still reaping huge benefits from high electricity prices. We expect high electricity prices in Europe to ease over the next two years and remain profitable enough for PV and wind projects to sell electricity to the spot market to support renewable energy development.

Grid-connection is a major bottleneck for the PV and wind markets, with an increasing number of PV and wind projects having to pay part of their grid-connection costs to find suitable projects in Europe, the US and other markets. In the European market, we see that due to strong demand and a shortage of installation workers, many buyers of residential PV in Europe may wait more than a few months for installation.

According to the data, the United States now has 2TW of photovoltaic and wind projects awaiting grid approval; More than 596GW of projects in the United States, Spain, Italy and France are awaiting grid-connection permits. The situation will be slightly better in Germany, where labor shortages limit project construction, especially in the field of rooftop PV.

Land restrictions are a major challenge in several markets that we expect to shrink this year. In Japan and South Korea, it is difficult for developers to find suitable land for project development, so they will focus on other alternatives, such as rooftop PV, parking lot PV, building integration and offshore PV.

This year we are very excited to see that Africa may usher in a year of rapid development of the photovoltaic industry. Previously, Nigeria has been relying on the government's subsidized gasoline to generate electricity, and after ending this subsidy to provide fuel to consumers, the cost of distributed PV in Nigeria has become relatively attractive.

As a result, we have revised up our forecast for Nigeria's new PV capacity, which is expected to reach 1.6GW by 2024. If the abolition of fossil energy subsidies can be maintained until 2030, the cumulative installed photovoltaic capacity of the entire Nigeria will reach 21.5GW, which is a big leap from the previous 5GW. In addition, Angola is also considering following the example of Nigeria to remove fossil energy subsidies, which may also be a factor in attracting increased investment in renewable energy in Africa.

In addition, South Africa also hopes to alleviate its current severe power crisis through renewable energy. Under the new measures, South African companies may receive a 125% tax incentive on renewable energy investment costs, and we have therefore raised South Africa's installed capacity forecast to 3.6GW, a significant increase from around 1GW installed in 2022