Australia may add 4GW of rooftop photovoltaics this year

    Steve Blume, president of the Smart Energy Council (SEC), a trading agency for solar energy, energy storage and smart energy, said Australia may also add 4GW of rooftop photovoltaic power generation this year. The head of the SEC delivered a speech at a two-day event organized by the Washington, DC-based Global Kit Off Grid Solar Council, which is the protection agency of the National Solar Energy Association.

    Blume said that in 2019, Australia's rooftop solar power generation increased by 22%, with new installed capacity of 2.2GW; last year this figure rose to 3.3GW of rooftop solar panels, and the installed capacity in the first half of this year increased by 30%.

    According to the president of SEC, 40.5 GW of rooftop solar energy in Australia is equivalent to 600 W of solar energy per person per day in the country. Stephan Singer, senior climate science and global energy policy adviser for the Bonn-based civil society Climate Action Network Group, said that the world’s richest countries should now prioritize emissions reductions above growing GDP.

    "Wealthy countries such as Germany, Belgium and [other] European countries do not need economic growth," he said at the two-day Global Solar Council event. "They need to learn to use the resources they currently have to transform from fossil fuels and nuclear energy to renewable energy and solar photovoltaic power generation." The event was organized with the help of the trading agency SolarPower Europe and also supported by the EU investment entity Get.Invest. .