Global solar demand on track for first annual decline in two decades

In late 2025, BloombergNEF (BNEF) projected that 2026 would be the first down year for solar panel installations in two decades. As of its presentation at SNEC 2026 in Shanghai, with Chinese capacity installations slowing significantly versus the prior year at this point, it looks like this projection may come true.

BNEF solar analyst Jenny Chase examined why the ongoing wars have a limited effect on solar, and what might pull the solar module industry from its doldrums.

Source: China National Energy Association via Bloomberg

Although there are multiple energy wars (Ukraine and the Middle East) ongoing, solar power is mostly indirectly affected. Both of these global events are heavily affecting oil, which — according to the International Energy Agency — represents only 2.6% of all electricity generation. However, the war in Ukraine began with conflict over natural gas resources, and the world’s largest liquefied natural gas export facility, in Qatar, has been taken out by Iranian missiles.

Since the start of the Middle East events, after an initial increase in global liquefied natural gas pricing, pricing has returned to the average pricing of 2025. Within the U.S., pricing increased for a moment — then returned to regular pricing. However, solar’s own pricing is having the greatest effect on solar deployment.

Across the world — China, France, California — solar power installations are driving negative pricing and curtailment. Across Europe in 2025, zero and negative pricing hours rose in seven countries, per BNEF. Spain logged 800 hours of zero or negative prices in 2025, and in the first quarter of 2026 set a new quarterly record of 397 hours of negative prices — already approaching 2025’s annual total of 555 negative-price hours, and more than a third of the roughly 1,080 daytime hours in the three-month window.

With this reality in mind, the question posed by BNEF was — what will drive solar deployment next? The answer focused on energy storage.

BNEF projects that after 2025’s record capacity deployment of 112 GW / 307 GWh, which was a 48% jump over 2024, a 41% increase to 158 GW / 459 GWh can be expected in 2026.

Energy storage is showing that it can arrest the downward pricing trend leading to “free” daytime solar in California. Still, Chase noted the 459 GWh of batteries to be added in 2026 can store only about 43 minutes of peak output from the 640 GW of new solar expected the same year.

An economic analysis by BNEF suggests that solar and storage have total deployment limits due to the low prices of coal and gas. These BNEF economic models suggest solar just breaks 30% of global electricity by 2050, with gas holding around 17% and coal sliding to roughly 10%.

Chase expects the actual deployment of solar and energy storage to outpace BNEF’s modeling, as deployments of both technologies have historically beaten forecasts.

While data centers are getting a lot of headlines, they’re not that big of a deal when considering all of the other ways electricity is used globally. In 2025, BNEF suggests data centers used 501 TWh of electricity, which is expected to more than double to 1,114 TWh — 3.6% of global electricity — by 2035.

The roughly 613 TWh increase would require, depending on where the solar is deployed, between 250 GW and 450 GW of solar capacity. At this year’s pace of 640 GW, it would increase solar deployments by 4% to 7% over the next decade.

Chase also noted there was an “X factor” which could drive demand: electric vehicles, which are expanding greatly due to war. In Europe, EV demand rose 24% year on year in April, per BNEF.

However, even EVs can carry solar only so far — BNEF’s Electric Vehicle Outlook projects a fully electric global road fleet would need some 8,313 TWh of electricity by 2050 in its Net Zero Scenario — roughly 80% more than data centers’ projected 4,627 TWh that year.

BNEF sees a path for far greater growth, forecasting roughly 900% growth over the recently reached 3 TW of cumulative capacity. BNEF said that in the 2050 Net Zero Scenario, cumulative installed solar capacity could reach 30.8 TW.