private investment

The world invested US$554 billion into solar PV projects in 2024, leading renewable electricity generation sources, according to IRENA.

The European Commission, along with the private partners, target to invest up to €240 million (US$260 million) each until 2030.

The fund has already started to deploy capital in support of this programme, including its first asset acquisitions in January 2023.

The total corporate funding into the global solar sector increased by 55% in Q1 2023 compared with Q4 2022, and 11% year-on-year compared with the same period in Q1 last year.

In January the South African government released an amendment to its energy action plan that lowered the local content requirements of solar modules deployed on government-backed schemes from 100% to 30%. The move was unsurprising to many, and may speak to the overwhelming rise of private projects in the country’s PV sector.

Higher interest rates in the second half of the year slowed down corporate funding in the global solar sector to US$24.1 billion in 2022, according to research from Mercom Capital Group.

The World Bank has approved US$165 million in additional financing to support 450MW of rooftop solar deployment in India and make distributed generation systems in the country more affordable.

New Zealand-based energy developer Helios Energy has unveiled a pipeline of 1GW of grid-connected solar projects to be developed in the country.

Solar energy leads global energy transition investments for 2020, rising by 12% to US$148.6 billion.

Online retail giant launches solar and wind projects in France, South Africa, Italy and Germany for the first time, bringing its total renewable capacity to 6.5GW.