Last week, the European Commission, in conjunction with industrial actors, research institutes, associations and other relevant parties launched the European Solar PV Industry Alliance.
The Alliance will help to mitigate supply risk by securing diversification of supplies through more diverse imports and scaled-up solar PV manufacturing of innovative and sustainable solar PVs in the EU. In a joint statement, the Commission and signatories of the Alliance set out the immediate priorities for 2023.
“This year we are expecting to add 40 gigawatts (GW) of solar photovoltaic installations in Europe. But this rate needs to increase to 60 GW a year for the EU to meet the REPowerEU goals. We need to support European industry on this journey, so I welcome the new Alliance, which is set to play an important role in our efforts to ensure energy independence, meet our climate goals and keep Europe competitive,” said Kadri Simson, European Commissioner for Energy.
Boosting domestic manufacturing capacity is a key element of the bloc’s REPowerEU strategy, which seeks to ensure over 320 GW of newly installed solar photovoltaic capacity by 2025, and almost 600 GW by 2030. The Alliance has endorsed the objective of reaching 30 GW of European manufacturing capacity by 2025, across the entire value chain. According to the Commission’s press release, reaching this objective would deliver 60 billion euros of new GDP annually in Europe and create more than 400,000 new jobs.
The Alliance will also offer policy inputs to reduce Europe’s risk of supply and support domestic industry.
In particular, the Alliance’s objectives and remit will focus on:
- Ensuring investment opportunities for European solar PVs: by mapping investment opportunities and creating project pipelines of bankable projects. It aims to attract private investments to develop and commercialise innovative and competitive PV products made in Europe. As a priority, it will work on aligning EU, national and private investments, including the individual National Recovery and Resilience Plans.
- An enabling environment for European solar PVs: by addressing barriers such as the need for simplified permitting procedures for new manufacturing sites or securing the supply of raw materials and components needed in production. The Alliance will also support sustainability and circularity across the value chain, identify leading innovations, including through EU-funded research as well as work on tackling labour and skills shortages in the sector. Additionally, it will help to stimulate demand by encouraging the use of non-price criteria in public actions.
- Diversifying supplies and building resilience in the supply chain: by finding alternative suppliers, partners and off-takers via existing and future partnerships, dialogues and trade fora to further reduce the bloc’s “current dependencies”.
The Commission has political leadership of the Alliance, supervising and acting as a facilitator of its work. The secretariat is run by a branch of the independent EU body, EIT: EIT InnoEnergy, following “the successful track record of the Batteries Alliance”.
