Global investment in renewable energy totaled $226 billion in the first half of 2022, setting a new record for the first six months of a year and representing an 11% year-on-year uptake according to Renewable Energy Investment Tracker 2H 2022, a new report published by research firm BloombergNEF (BNEF). The uptick in investment reflects an acceleration in demand for clean energy supplies to tackle the ongoing global energy and climate crises.
Within renewables, investment in new large- and small-scale solar projects rose to a record-breaking $120 billion, up 33% from the first half of 2021 according to BNEF. This stellar growth dovetails with the latest analysis of the solar encapsulant market by MLT Analytics (MLTA), which is exhibiting a transitional shift towards increased use of polyolefin elastomer (POE) encapsulation coinciding with bifacial modules increase their market share. POE reportedly features enhanced potential-induced degradation (PID) resistance compared with conventional ethylene-vinyl-acetate (EVA) which has dominated the market to date.
MLTA has developed a model to forecast the volumes of EVA and POE used in solar module encapsulant sheet that considers various parameters, such as bifacial module penetration, sheet thickness, average module output, and encapsulant layer structure (monomaterial versus co-extruded structures). This model allows the creation of various scenarios for encapsulant demand forecasting. The base case scenario predicts total encapsulant volume to more than triple between 2022 and 2035, with POE steadily increasing its market share.
Please contact MLTA for more information on encapsulant demand modeling and intelligence on the EVA and POE markets in general. Further, an abridged version of Renewable Energy Investment Tracker 2H 2022 can be downloaded from this page.
New large-scale solar investments totaled $66 billion in 1H 2022, up 27% on the previous year, albeit lower than 2H 2021. Solar investment typically picks up to the second half of a calendar year as project developers rush to take advantage of incentives such as feed-in tariffs. Image: BloombergNEF