Highlights

Czechia’s solar market slowed in 2025, largely due to a downturn in residential deployments. The country’s solar association says that while it remains to be seen if the rate of installations will pick up this year, significant growth is expected in the storage market.

Oxford PV CEO David Ward spoke with pv magazine about the prospects of its company and the perovksite-silicon tandem PV technology at the WFES event in Abu Dhabi. He said Oxford PV is expanding manufacturing beyond Germany while focusing on global licensing partnerships.

Latest report from energy think tank Dii Desert Energy says that with the Middle East and North Africa’s project pipeline of renewables now standing at 202 GW, solar is likely to drive the region past its aggregated national ambitions for renewables of 235 GW by 2030.

Romania enjoyed another record year for solar deployment in 2025, taking cumulative capacity past the 7 GW threshold. Utility-scale installations almost doubled year-on-year, buoyed by a favourable regulatory framework.

Norway’s solar market experienced a slowdown in 2025, particularly among residential installations. The outlook for 2026 looks more optimistic, thanks to policy reforms supporting larger projects and continued demand from commercial and industrial customers.

A draft decree from Vietnam’s Ministry of Industry and Trade is proposing rooftop solar owners could sell up to 50% of the energy produced back to the grid, in a bid to increase future uptake.

Croatia’s solar capacity is on course to exceed its wind energy capacity for the first time in early 2026. With utility-scale projects facing regulatory deadlock and the end of net-metering for the residential market, growth is being led by commercial and industrial customers.

China will scrap value-added tax export rebates for PV products from April 1, 2026, while cutting battery rebates ahead of a full phaseout, raising export costs for manufacturers and potentially pulling shipments forward into early 2026.

Effective since January 1, 2026, the Solar Accelerated Transition Action Programme (Solar ATAP) aims to build on Malaysia’s previous net metering program’s efforts to maximize the use of rooftops for solar generation by incentivizing consumers to export excess generation to the grid. The capacity limit has been set at 100% of the consumer’s maximum demand, or 1 MW.

China’s antitrust regulator has halted an industry-led effort to reduce polysilicon capacity and coordinate pricing, ordering full rectification of actions that contributed to rising market prices. Futures fell sharply after the intervention.