Wednesday, 29 July 2026

Chile could install between 27 GW and 58 GW of new photovoltaic capacity over the next 30 years, according to pv magazine's report on the preliminary version of the Ministry of Energy's Long-Term Energy Planning document (PELP) 2028-2032.

The modelling starts from an installed base of 12,015 MW of solar capacity, a figure that covers both utility-scale plants and small distributed generation facilities, pv magazine reported.

Onshore wind carries a narrower range in the same document: an expansion of between 16 GW and 27 GW, according to pv magazine.

Storage anchors the dispatch side of the model. Per pv magazine, the plan uses 4,078 MW of battery energy storage systems (BESS) installed or under construction by the end of 2026 as its starting point, with an average storage duration of 4.3 hours.

The consequence of that build-out, as reported by pv magazine, is a system in which at least 83% of annual electricity generation comes from solar photovoltaic or wind power towards the end of the projected timeframe.

Demand is the widest variable in the exercise. The scenarios span national energy demand growth of between 4.1% and 47.8% across the analyzed period, according to pv magazine. That spread is what separates the 27 GW solar case from the 58 GW one.

Data centres appear as a distinct load line. pv magazine reported that the document puts data centre capacity at 198 MW in 2024, rising to roughly 594 MW in 2030 and 900 MW in 2057. Against a solar addition measured in tens of gigawatts, that load is small in absolute terms, but it is one of the few demand categories the plan tracks separately over the full horizon.

The ranges rather than point estimates are the substance here. A planning document that treats solar additions as a factor-of-two question, and wind as a factor-of-nearly-two question, is telling procurement and transmission planners that the capacity mix follows the demand assumption rather than setting it. The 4.3-hour average duration on the existing storage fleet, per pv magazine, sets the reference point against which any further shifting of midday solar output into evening hours would be measured.

Wind and solar farms in Germany generated more electricity than fossil-fuelled plants for the first time ever last year, according to Carbon Brief. The two technologies produced 225 TWh, or 44% of the national total, against 217 TWh, or 43%, from fossil fuels, Carbon Brief reported.

The margin is narrow, but it inverts the ranking that has defined the German power system since the grid was built. Coal and gas plants are now the second-largest block in the mix rather than the first, on Carbon Brief's figures.

The shift is not confined to one national market. Carbon Brief said wind and solar also overtook fossil-fuel generation across the EU as a whole for the first time in the same year.

Berlin's build-out targets are steeper still. Carbon Brief reported that Germany is aiming for 115 GW of onshore wind capacity by 2030, and that permitting hit a record 20.8 GW of new capacity in the year the crossover occurred. Approvals at that pace matter more than installed additions in a country where consenting delays, not turbine supply, have set the ceiling.

The wider policy goal is an 80% renewables share of electricity consumption by 2030, according to Carbon Brief, on the way to a power system the government describes as "largely climate neutral".

Full decarbonisation of the electricity sector is tied to the exit from coal, which carries an official deadline of "no later than" 2038, Carbon Brief said. That end date leaves the remaining fossil share to be squeezed out over a period longer than the one covering the renewables target.

The political framing is contested. Carbon Brief reported that Chancellor Friedrich Merz described the country's nuclear phaseout as a "strategic mistake". His verdict sits awkwardly beside the generation data, which shows wind and solar closing the gap left by retired reactors and displacing thermal output at the same time.

What the numbers do not settle is durability. A gap of one percentage point between the two blocks, on Carbon Brief's accounting, can be reopened by a low-wind year or a cold winter that lifts gas burn. The record permitting volume is the clearer signal of where the mix is headed.

The cost gap that makes CSIRO's least-ambitious decarbonisation pathway look cheapest largely disappears when different fuel prices are used, according to IEEFA. Re-running CSIRO's published model with AEMO Slower Growth gas and coal prices produced an electricity system cost of $128.5/MWh for the NoProgressToNetZero scenario, just $2.3/MWh below WeakNetZero at $130.8/MWh, down from a prior gap of $6.6/MWh.

The GenCost 2025-26 report added modelling this year estimating the cost of various electricity generation mixes in 2050 across five scenarios, IEEFA said. One outcome was that electricity system costs could be 5% lower in NoProgressToNetZero than in the next-least-ambitious scenario.

That label overstates how little changes under the scenario. NoProgressToNetZero still reaches 70% renewables, 19% gas and 11% coal by 2050, which IEEFA describes as a substantial transition from today.

IEEFA also points to CSIRO's own finding on where abatement is cheapest: electricity sector emissions reduction costs a third to a half of the cost of emissions reduction elsewhere in the economy, making weak or no progress in the power sector an inefficient route to net zero.

On how much weight to place on the 2050 numbers, GenCost itself advises that where its scenario results differ from the Integrated System Plan, the ISP should be given greater weight.

Chinese solar factories can now supply roughly double global demand for solar products, according to analysis by the research firm Rhodium Group cited by Grist. The manufacturers behind that capacity remain in the red: Grist reported $1.5 billion in announced losses for the first quarter of 2026, extending roughly three years of continuous unprofitability.

The build-out traces back to a policy choice. China designated solar a strategic industry in 2010, prompting massive public investment, Grist reported.

On the demand side of the electricity system, the direction of travel is the opposite. Carbon emissions from the U.S. power sector rose 4 percent last year, outpacing the 2 percent increase in economy-wide emissions, according to a U.S. Energy Information Administration report described by Grist.

The EIA attributes the power sector increase to a 13 percent rise in coal generation, partially driven by the proliferation of large-scale data centers.

Virginia, home to the world's largest AI cluster, saw one of the sharpest moves. Utilities there almost doubled coal generation to serve the state's growing clusters of data centers, according to Grist.

That load growth is not finished. Data centers could account for more than 10 percent of U.S. electricity usage by 2030, Grist reported.

China installed 72.07 GW of new solar capacity in the first half of 2026, down about 66% from 212.21 GW a year earlier, according to pv magazine.

CPIA has kept its full-year forecast for China at 180 GW to 240 GW of new solar capacity, against around 315 GW in 2025, pv magazine reported. Even the top of that range would leave 2026 as the first year of declining annual installations in China since 2019.

The manufacturing chain contracted alongside the domestic market, though unevenly. Polysilicon output came to 538,000 tonnes in the first six months, a fall of 9.8% year on year, per pv magazine. Wafer production slipped 7.3% to 293 GW over the same period.

Further downstream the drops were steeper. Cell production fell 21.9% to 260.7 GW and module output was down 35.1% to 201.3 GW, according to pv magazine.

Prices tracked the same direction. By early July polysilicon was trading 42.3% below its January level, with wafer prices off 28.7% and cell prices off 27.7%, pv magazine reported.

Exports moved the other way. Shipments of wafers, cells and modules were worth USD 17.18 billion in the first half, up 24.3% year on year, according to pv magazine.

The contraction is not confined to China. CPIA expects global additions to fall 8% to 612 GW this year, pv magazine reported. The association sees annual additions of 864 GW by 2030, which pv magazine put at a compound annual growth rate of around 7% from 2026.