In this video, we're going to look at current investment in growth potential for photovoltaics. By the end of this lesson, you should be able to define the current market share of photovoltaics, identify which countries are installing photovoltaics and explain why, identify photovoltaic use sector and market data sources, and assess what types of photovoltaic investments are available referencing the United States as a model. So, let's look at the current state of renewables. If we look at electricity as a whole, over 75 percent of all electricity use in the world is generated using fossil fuels. Roughly 25 percent comes from renewables and of that,16 percent is from hydroelectric and only 1.5 percent is from photovoltaic. So, right now hydro-power forms a large portion of the renewable energy portfolio for electricity and solar photovoltaic is one of the smallest. At the same time, photovoltaics are one of the largest areas for growth while hydroelectric power is somewhat stagnant because we're limited by geographic resources. We can compare this in terms of monetary investments as well. If we look at where investments were from 2012 to 2016, there have been steady investments in fossil fuel and nuclear power across the world. On the renewable side, the majority of the investments have been in solar photovoltaics with wind coming in second. Note that hydro-power has remained flat and even begun to shrink because there's not as many hydroelectric facilities that are available to us. Across the world, where there are many potential photovoltaic and power sources, there are limited other natural resources. So, who needs to install electricity and why? Well, you may think a large portion of the world is electrified but there are large populations across the globe that are without any form of electricity. Looking at certain parts of the world, we see that 45 percent of people in Africa have electricity, but 634 million people do not have electricity of any form, renewable or otherwise, grid or off-grid. In fact looking at the highest groups without electricity, a majority of people are in sub-Saharan Africa, followed by developing countries within Asia, then Latin America and the Middle East. These are all areas which are underdeveloped for electrical support. So, if they eventually invest in electrification, they can go conventional fossil or renewables. Given their geographic location, photovoltaics will make a lot of sense. So, if we're looking at where photovoltaics could have largest growth and entrepreneurship potential for electricity, these countries and regions are places we want to look at. So, why do some countries have large photovoltaic investments and others have much less, even when they're already electrified? Well, if we look at the photovoltaic policies that exist already, we see that large portions of Europe and Asia have national renewable energy policies in place. United States and Canada instead, they have something a little different where they have state-based requirements not federal. Some countries that are just beginning to add policies now, but note that again, large portions of Africa as well as the Middle East or in that gray color which means that these countries have no policy on renewable energy. So, because they have no renewable energy policy, helps explain why they're not promoting investments in renewable installations, including photovoltaics. So, how can we begin to begin to afford all the solar since there's all this potential? Well, there is potential and costs become a concern. The good news is, the outlook for pricing keeps going down exponentially. If we look at the price in 1976, we were almost $100 per watt. But today we're much closer to $1 or under per watt, which is pretty impressive. But that decrease also begins to slow down because there's still going to be some what are known as soft costs associated the utility integration and permitting. But still that largest piece the PV module installation has decreased significantly. So, there's lots of information that one can get about photovoltaics, policies and markets and its ever-changing. So, what sources are available to you? Well there are several good resources that are either non-commercial or governmental groups. One of them is the IEA or International Energy Agency, which produces regular reports on the outlook of various energy sources. One of them specifically looks at photovoltaics is referenced here. Another source is the Energy Information Administration or EIA which reports on the United States energy max and not only shows utility-based energy use but sales of renewable and non-renewable alike. There's also the Ren 21 group or the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st century. They put out a very nice annual report showing graphs, charts, and trends for all renewable energies across the globe. Then finally, there's the National Renewable Energy Lab or NREL This is the US authority for energy researcher reports. They give some of the most up-to-date information about renewable energy in the United States. I encourage you to check out these sources and review some of the documents they've produced about solar energy. In the next segment, we'll use the United States as a case study for photovoltaic investment and growth.
