Global Electricity Consumption Forecast

According to CRU’s previous report, between 2020 and 2025, the global electricity consumption will increase from 2,666.3 billion kWh in 2019 at an annual rate of about 2.2% to about 30,317 terawatt-hours in 2025. As the cost of photovoltaic projects has shown a continuous decline in recent years, and is now slightly lower than the cost of coal-fired power projects, it is estimated that the proportion of photovoltaic power generation will increase from 2.3% in 2019.

On the Chinese side, according to the China Power Development Report 2019 issued by the National Electric Power Planning and Design Institute in July 2020, the electricity consumption of the whole society will reach 9,100-9,500 terawatt-hours in 2025, and the national peak load control scale during the 14th Five-Year Plan is about 50 million kilowatts.

As far as the future PV installed capacity and power generation are concerned, according to the forecast of China Photovoltaic Industry Association in combination with related issues in the 14th Five-Year Plan, under optimistic circumstances, the global average annual PV installed capacity will reach 287 GW, and under relatively conservative estimates, it will also reach 222 GW.

In China, under optimistic circumstances, the average annual installed photovoltaic capacity will reach about 90 GW during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, and it will be close to 70 GW under relatively conservative estimates.

In terms of photovoltaic installed capacity, CRU’s report in June 2020 predicted that by 2030, the global cumulative photovoltaic installed capacity will exceed 1,500 GW. Among them, China’s contribution will be around 32%. However, when CRU issued the document, the Chinese side had not published the 14th Five-Year Plan report, and did not explicitly mention the specific targets for the development and installed capacity of the photovoltaic sector in the future. In contrast, CRU’s forecast for future additions was very conservative compared with that of China Photovoltaic Industry Association.

The predictions of future PV installed capacity by other institutions around the world are mostly between the predictions of China Photovoltaic Industry Association and CRU. As far as the average annual installed capacity is concerned, institutions generally predict that by 2025, the newly added average annual installed capacity will reach the level of 200 GW.