IHS lowers Saudi Arabia’s PV forecast after push-out of renewable energy plans

Market research firm, IHS has significantly lowered its PV demand forecast for Saudi Arabia in response to the country pushing back its renewable energy plans by eight years in the wake of plummeting oil prices. 

IHS said that it had halved the five-year outlook for PV installations in Saudi Arabia from 1.6GW to just 800MW. Worse is that IHS expects the country to deploy the bulk of new PV capacity in the period from 2020 to 2040, with only 1GW expected to be deployed through 2020.   

PV installations in Saudi Arabia were said by the market research firm to have ‘stagnated at less than 20MW.’

“An additional factor that will determine the PV deployment is the evolution of a local manufacturing base, given Saudi Arabia’s emphasis on supporting local industry,” noted Josefin Berg, Senior Analyst, IHS Technology. 

Saudi Arabia had previously been expected to install around 41GW of PV by 2032.

With the change in its plans, IHS said the new 2040 plan equates to average annual capacity additions of 640MW over 25 years.