Column: Next solar expansion drive needs to hit higher potential markets: Maguire

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

73% : According to the World Bank's Global Solar Atlas, which provides a harmonized view of the amount of solar energy available for each country, the highest potential areas for solar power production are mainly in Africa and the Middle East, thanks to year-round sunny conditions.
62% :Between 2016 and 2021 the country expanded renewable energy production by nearly 300%, but it still relies on fossil fuels for nearly 90% of its electricity.
61% : Solar power has outpaced wind power over the last five years in terms of global capacity additions, notching up a more than 200% increase in worldwide generation from 2016 to 2021, compared to a 93.5% rise in wind generation during the same slot.
58% : China, the United States, Japan, India and Germany together generated 67.4% of all solar power in 2021, and have been among the largest solar power developers for decades.
52% : The problem is, when measured by photovoltaic power potential, or the amount of sunlight available to generate solar power, three of those countries are not even in the top 100 most suitable solar locations.
42% :Of course, the one-megawatt plant at the Sharm el-Sheikh hotel is negligible compared to the nearly 66 terawatt-hours of solar power brought online by China alone between 2020 and 2021.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.