Ahead of the S&P Global Platts Global Power Markets conference in Las Vegas, April 8-10, 2019, The Barrel presents a series of articles on the global and US electricity sectors. Here, Bruno Brunetti and Lin Fan analyze world power capacity additions in 2018 and look at factors that will drive developments this year.

Global investment in renewable power capacity continues to outstrip that in fossil fuels and nuclear, but growth has softened recently as a result of policy U-turns – with solar additions notably impacted.

A major change in the support for renewables was announced in May 2018 in China, creating uncertainty in a country that had been a global leader in terms of solar growth over the past several years. PV tariffs and installation quotas were reduced, while China is looking to introduce tenders for utility-scale plants and market-based allocation for distributed PV. Capacity additions in China during 2018 have totaled only about 44 GW, a decline by 16% on the year.