European market slows down
After the euphoria of 2011, the European Union's photovoltaic (PV) market slowed right down in 2012. EurObserv'ER puts newly-connected capacity in 2012 at 16.5 GWp compared to 22 GWp in 2011, which is a 25% slide. At global level the market generally held up, with just over 30 GWp installed, bolstered by the build-up of the America and Asian markets.
The global market is migrating towards the Asian and American markets. With a little hindsight, it is fair to say that European market growth conditions were not ideal. In the last three years, growth has mainly been driven by speculative investments taking advantage of the persisting difference between the guaranteed earnings levels and the very fast drop in production costs. Some governments are finding the pill hard to swallow as they seek to lighten the cost by introducing taxes on electricity production or retroactive amendments to their laws: Czech Republic (retroactive tax on investments), Bulgaria (grid access tax), Greece (tax on already-installed and future systems), the Flanders region of Belgium (retroactive grid access tax) and Spain (tax on all electricity producers' earnings).
According to EurObserv'ER, newly-connected capacity in the European Union amounted to 16520 MWp in 2012, which is a 25% year-on-year slide. At the end of 2012 the installed capacity to date in the European Union was 68647 MWp, which equates to 136.3 Wp of photovoltaic capacity per capita.
This additional capacity naturally implies an increase in PV solar power output, which rose to 68.1 TWh in 2012 (50.1% more than in 2011). Output is now actually three times higher than it was in 2010 and solar power currently covers more than 2% of European Union electricity consumption. The European Union (EU) per capita PV capacity figure now stands at 136.3 Wp per inhabitant. Leading EU countries are Germany (399.5 Wp/inhab), Italy (269.0 Wp/inhab) and Belgium (240.0 kW/1000 inhab). Also Czech Republic, Greece and Bulgaria have a relatively high PV capacity per thousand inhabitants.
