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Annual spending on solar energy will surpass outlays for fossil fuel development in 2023, a significant turning point for the global energy industry. Investment in green energy technologies has been boosted significantly by China’s plan to build out of 1200 gigawatts of renewable capacity, as well as favorable trade policies internationally. China is projected to add more than 150GW of solar in this year alone, a larger sum than the US’s installed capacity across the past five decades.

Related ETF: Invesco Solar ETF (TAN)

Last week, the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced that 2023 would be a landmark year in green energy investment – particularly for solar power capacity. Spending on renewable energy will once again extend its lead over spending on fossil fuels in 2023, the IEA said in its most recent World Energy Investment report, but solar projects are expected to outpace outlays on oil production for the first time ever. Reuters notes that Solar power spending will be equivalent to $1 billion per day, totaling $382 billion for the year, while investment in oil production will stand at $371 billion. IEA executive director Fatih Birol added that, “For every dollar invested in fossil fuels, about 1.7 dollars are now going into clean energy.”

The IEA’s data compounds similar findings from Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s (BNEF) “Energy Transition Investment Trends 2023” report, which claimed that global investments in the clean energy transition hit $1.1 trillion last year, roughly equal to the amount invested in fossil fuel production for the first time ever. That sum represents a 31% jump from 2022 as solar and wind power accounted for the biggest chunk of 2022 investments, reaching $495 billion.

As MRP highlighted in March, the largest driver of solar spending and installation continues to be China. The world’s leading solar power generator brought an all-time high of 87.41 gigawatts (GW) of new solar power into…

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