Yes, you can do exactly that, but it won't change where use
and require
look for the modules you are including. All it will affect is where file operations like open
will look for files specified with a relative path.
What you need is the lib
pragma, like this
use lib 'C:/folder1';
at the head of your program. This will add the directory to @INC
which is the built-in array of directories that Perl searches for included modules.