Japan increases government solar incentives
Last Thursday I wrote about how China was going to give the solar industry a boost by introducing government backed incentives for solar project developers.
Well yesterday Japan announced it was going to extend its already existing Solar incentives by providing around 2 Trillion Japanese Yen to be spent on solar projects over the next three years. This equates to around 1GW of demand per year which is very significant seeing as Japan only installed around 280MW last year.
Japanese manufacturers of solar panels such as Sharp and Kyocera should be the first to benefit but the solar industry as a whole should benefit from this extra demand as it reduces the supply/demand inbalance I talked about last Thursday.
Most of the additional demand in Japan will come from Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) as land values are too high to justify large utility scale “solar farms” as Japan is such as mountainous country.
So two good bits of news for the solar industry in one week. With the G20 meeting on Thursday we could see some further positive news. There is also talk of a green stimulus element to the Chinese stimulus plan which would be further good news for the alternative energy industry as a whole.
