In 2012, our “300 GW/a PV initiative” set out a vision of a very ambitious annual global PV market by 2025. At the time, many dismissed the target as “crazy.” Instead, reality has gone far beyond that ambition: according to the latest figures from the IEA PVPS, the world installed 698 GW of new PV capacity in 2025, which is more than double our original vision.
When we launched the “300 GW/a PV initiative” in September 2012—calling for 300 GW of annual global PV installations by 2025 and 200 GW of cumulative installed capacity in Germany—the global market was adding just 27 GW to 30 GW per year. The objective was intended to inspire and motivate the industry.
The outcome exceeded even those ambitions. The industry did not merely reach 300 GW of annual installations; it surpassed that milestone spectacularly, ending 2025 with 698 gigawatts of newly installed photovoltaic capacity.
Global installed PV capacity now stands at almost 3 TW. While it took nearly 40 years to reach the first terawatt, total capacity has tripled within just three years.
Germany has now reached 126 GW of installed PV capacity—almost 2.5 times the former 52 GW cap that remained in force until the summer of 2020. When that cap was introduced in 2012, Germany’s cumulative capacity stood at just 34 GW.
