The worldwide photovoltaics (PV) market has been growing at over 35% per annum in recent years and it can now make a significant contribution to electricity generation. Development work is focused on increasing the energy efficiency and reducing material usage of systems and modules. New technologies are developing quickly, including PV thin film (using alternative semiconductor materials) or dye sensitive solar cells, and these present a huge potential for cost reduction.

Photovoltaics have been following a fairly consistent pattern of cost reduction of 20% each time the capacity doubles; this scenario assumes a level of 5 to 10 c/kWh by 2050, depending on the world region. Over the next five to ten years PV will become competitive with retail electricity prices in many parts of the world and competitive with fossil fuel costs by 2050.

Solar PV is a critical part of the energy mix – it can be used in decentralized or centralized formats, it is useful in an urban environment and has huge potential for cost reduction.

employment in pv Under the basic Energy [R]evolution scenario, solar PV would provide 5% of total electricity generation by 2030, and employs 1.7 million people. The advanced case would achieve a share of 6.3% and 2.8 million employees by 2030. In the Reference scenario, there are only 0.3 million employed in PV in 2015. Jobs in PV stay nearly constant from 2015 to 2030 in the three scenarios as the cost reduction in the technology and the projected increase in GDP per capita means the increase in capacity just keeps pace with the reduction in jobs per MW, so the employment advantage of the [R]evolution scenario is maintained.