According to Smart Planet : ” Almost three-quarters of all new solar systems worldwide were installed in Europe in 2009. ” Indeed out of the 7.4 GW installed last year, 5.8 GW were located in the European Union.
Out of this, a whopping 3.8 GW were installed in Germany. That’s right, Deutschland alone is behind more than half of the global added solar PV installations. The cumulative capacity of photovoltaïc there is 9.8 GW.
This seems large figures, but the article notes that this energy source supplied only 0.4 percent of the total electricity in Europe last year. This is less, much less than tiny.
On a global scale, in 2009, 0.1 percent of global electricity was brought by solar panels. This really puts into perspective the importance of solar. We may hear and read about it every week and even day, but it still accounts for almost nothing on the global scale.
If we want this to change we should act massively on energy efficiency and conservation to cut total energy consumption and stop installing fossil fuels power plants. In any case, we are still miles and miles away from solar accounting for ten percent of the global electricity mix.
For more on Europe’s domination of the PV market, please check out the Photovoltaics Status Report published on Monday by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre.