The EIA said that 19 gigawatts of solar capacity were added in 2023, and the over 37 gigawatts expected this year account for the large jump in generation. So they’re basically calling for a doubling of solar in 2024. Well hello there, my friends. Chris Marcus here with you for Arcadia Economics, and today in our video we’re going to be looking at some of the new solar figures that are coming out which are, as you can imagine, continuing to grow quite a bit larger. We’ll take a look at the U.S., China, and also some of the figures about India as they have been importing a lot of silver, and have their own plans to be doing a lot more building of solar panels, which will of course require silver.

So with that said, let us dig in and get started. And to begin, I’m recording late Tuesday afternoon where we can see that the silver price had a good day up 38 cents up to 28.82. So despite the sell-offs of the past couple of weeks, we’re not far off once again from that $30 number. Of course we have $29 to get through before we get there, but it’s encouraging to see that even after a sell-off, even as the banks remain short, that the silver price continuing to quite well. Again, up 38 cents on Tuesday, while gold had a bit of a rebound.

It was down quite a bit on Monday, but rebounded up $20 almost, 1935 to be precise, on Tuesday to $23.62. And something that we’ll probably do a little bit more often, taking a look at some of the prices in the Shanghai Gold and Shanghai Futures Exchanges, where here we see silver still trading at $31.42. Again, that was the beginning of the session, but about $3 higher, which again, I think speaks to the demand that is coming out of China, certainly where they are producing a lot of solar panels. And as I mentioned, have not seen any decline in the rates of solar panels that are being used and added and the amount of energy that is calling to be produced from solar.

Here was an interesting article. Thank you, Bix. I saw he mentioned this in one of his videos, and fascinating what they have in here, solar to contribute over 60% of new US electricity generation in 2024. And here was the key part. The EIA said that 19 gigawatts of solar capacity were added in 2023, and the over 37 gigawatts expected this year account for the doubling of solar in 2024. So again, not really any signs of things slowing down. And when you look at some of the projections that the governments have to meet the green agenda by 2030, they’ll have to continue adding a lot of solar capacity.

And we’ll see as the year progresses, how much they’re actually able to get done in the US, although here the EIA suggesting that basically you’re going to have a doubling. Meanwhile, China’s cumulative photovoltaic capacity top 660 gigawatts. And here you can see the NEA said the nation’s cumulative installed PV capacity reached 660 gigawatts at the end of March. And here’s the interesting part. In the first three months of the year, the country added 45.7 gigawatts. And as comparison in 2023, they added 33.7 gigawatts of new solar capacity in the first quarter.

So already up 35% over last year’s figures, just three months into the year and on track for another big year. Then we take a look over to India, where this is coming from Reistat Energy’s renewable and power solution. You can see in 2024, looking at 84.7 gigawatts, calling to jump to 119 2025, up to 152 in 2027. And we actually do have a few more numbers on this because there was recently a recap per metals focus on some of the dynamics in India. And the first note here is that you may have noticed that India, a lot of their silver imports have been increasingly coming from the United Arab Emirates, which was part of the comprehensive economic partnership act that they agreed to in February of 2022, where the goal was to boost trade between the two countries by reducing duties and providing incentives.

So basically what that comes out to is that silver that’s coming from the UAE will have its import duty reduced by 1% per year, over 10 years until it reaches zero. And how that works out is that right now, India has a customs duty of 15% outside of this agreement. While the rate that is being charged to imports under this agreement from the UAE is now down to 9%, along with of course, there’s a value added tax of 3%. So still they’re looking at a 12% fee versus 15% for silver that comes outside of the UAE.

And we can see silver shipments started to arrive in India from July 23, under the CEPA imports started to ramp up after the India International Bullying Exchange, which you often see referred to as the IIBX, made the process easier by launching a silver contract in December of 23. And so far in 2024, we’ve seen India import 3800 tons of silver in the first quarter, which of course included that big figure of 2200 tons in February, which was a record and leaves the first quarter total already 9% ahead of the full year of 2023, with 888 tons being imported from the UAE.

And they also had a note about the PV plans in India where the country is aiming to achieve 500 gigawatts of electricity production by renewables by 2030, with the country aiming to produce 186 gigawatts of solar power by 2027 and reaching 365 by 2030. So they have that 2027 number, about 33 million ounces higher, but you can see if you’re going to reach 365 gigawatts by 2030, and here we are in 2024 around 85 gigawatts, obviously a lot of solar that is going to need to be produced, and a lot of silver that is going to be required to produce it.

And that plan means that India is going to need to add approximately 40 to 50 gigawatts of photovoltaic capacity each year until 2030, although in 2023 only 7.5 gigawatts of new capacity was added. And as part of their strategy, they’re aiming to do a lot more of the domestic manufacturing, which will certainly have to step up quite a bit to meet these targets going forward, although in the context of that, perhaps not as surprising to see the large figures of billion imports that we’ve already seen so far into India this year.

And at the current rate, we would be on pace to set a new record that would top the record that was set in 2022. Again, 2023 was a bit of a lower year, but on track now, at least after the first three months of 2024, we would be on pace for another new record. So something that certainly will keep an eye on here, and I believe we may be getting the April import figures later this week. So of course, if we do, we’ll be sure to mention that on the show. And a few other things to look at in silver, here is the weekly silver transparent holdings, which is the ETFs, as well as the COMEX.

Again, you can see this going down pretty steadily over the past two years. We did have those large additions just over a month ago into one of the European ETFs, although we’ve seen some withdrawals since then and numbers starting to come back down ever since we’ve seen that. And again, when you look at all of the inventories, in fact, I have the LBMA also pulled up here, where you can see that we are just over 800 million ounces in the LBMA. Keep in mind, a lot of that is being stored for the ETF, so a much smaller percentage of that that is actually unencumbered.

And when you add in that we are seeing deficits in the silver market for the past couple of years, certainly that again would seem to indicate that a lot of the deficit is being met with silver that’s coming out of inventories, which does not mean that we are on the verge of an industrial silver shortage tomorrow. And the COMEX registered as actually up over 60 million ounces right now had gotten down below 30 million ounces last year, and we’ve seen some inflows into there lately. Yet with the Silver Institute forecasting another deficit, which would be one of the larger ones for 2024, again, we will see how long these dynamics take to play out, but certainly not on track for an abundance of silver, especially when you consider some of the factors driving the demand.

But one last thing I wanted to mention before we wrap up is something that Tom Lwago talked about during his interview last week on the show, and just thought I’d share it here, because here’s Judy Shelton responding to a tweet about, in 1961, Nixon abolished the gold standard, 2024 reintroduced it, and she writes, thinking something like that, but in 2026, stay tuned, interesting comment that she left there. I would say perhaps even more so given the fact that the Philadelphia Federal Reserve published a paper in January about the impact of a gold standard on prices, and then we see Judy’s comments, and I will let you make your own conclusions about that, but certainly a lot more talk, not even in just the gold and silver circles these days, but that whether there will need to be some sort of adjustment to the currency system as some of the dynamics continue to build, especially as the US is facing the higher interest rates, and a higher debt expense, and a whole bunch of other things that are not so ideal at this time, but either case, hopefully that helps to put all of it in perspective a little bit.

Real quick, before we wrap up, I would like to thank First Majestic Silver for bringing us today’s video. First Majestic did have their earnings last week, which were impacted by lower production and a higher all-in-sustaining cost, although with the all-in-sustaining cost, one thing that I know that they’re looking forward to is getting the water issues at La Incandada resolved, which will certainly help bring that down, and another thing just wanted to point out here is that they had an average realized price of 23.72 on their silver equivalent ounces sold, which is on track to be quite a bit higher, especially in the second quarter.

If we maintain the next month and a half anywhere near the pricing level that we’ve seen for the past month and a half, that will bring up that sale price and hopefully make a big difference as First Majestic continues to restructure things following the shutdown of Jarrett Canyon, but hopefully a good second quarter on the way, and with that said, gonna wrap up for today, but hope you’re doing well out there, thanks for watching, and we’ll see you again soon!
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