Energy : Work on a European Solar Photovoltaic Industry Alliance is started by the Commission.

 Energy

Work on a European Solar Photovoltaic Industry Alliance is started by the Commission.

In order to scale up manufacturing technologies for cutting-edge solar photovoltaic goods and components, the Commission today formally endorses a new Solar Photovoltaic Industry Alliance. This will help the EU's energy infrastructure become more resilient and speed up the implementation of solar energy there.

The Alliance is one of the specific projects of the EU Solar Energy Strategy, which was established in May 2022 as a component of the REPowerEU Plan and will assist the EU in achieving over 320 GW of newly installed solar photovoltaic capacity by 2025 and about 600 GW by 2030. With today's endorsement, a membership call for the Alliance can now be published in November.

The Single Market's commissioner, Thierry Breton, stated:

"To meet Europe's renewable energy objectives — and avoid replacing a dependency on Russian fossil fuels with new dependencies — we are launching an industrial alliance for solar energy. With the alliance's support, the EU could reach 30 Gigawatt of annual solar energy manufacturing capacity by 2025 across the full PV value chain. The alliance will foster an innovative and value-creating industry in Europe, which leads to job creation here. Europe's solar industry already created more than 357,000 jobs. We have the potential to double these figures by the end of the decade."

Once established, the Alliance will bring together commercial players, academic institutions, consumer advocacy groups, non-governmental organizations, and other parties with a stake in the solar PV industry. It will deliver an action plan for the European solar industry's value chain and interact with the EU and Member States on a variety of topics, including research and development, technology, the industrial supply chain, raw materials, financial accessibility, off-takers, international partnerships, and the resilience, circularity, sustainability, and skill levels of the world's supply chains. By the end of the year, the Solar Photovoltaic Industry Alliance is anticipated to launch. To develop it, the Commission will collaborate with EITInnoEnergy and build on the Batteries Alliance's proven track record of performance.

The Commission's strategy of using industrial coalitions has been extremely effective and serves as a template for the future. For instance, the Battery Alliance has been instrumental in assuring that by 2030, Europe will be able to generate up to 90% of the batteries it needs. The European Clean Hydrogen Alliance is increasing Europe's capacity to produce hydrogen.