REPowerEU: New industrial Alliance to boost the EU’s solar power and energy security

This article is brought to you in association with the European Commission.

Today, the Commission together with industrial actors, research institutes, associations and other relevant parties launched the European Solar PV Industry Alliance.

The alliance will help mitigating 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.

Boosting domestic manufacturing capacity will be key for the EU to reach the REPowerEU objectives of over 320 GW of newly installed solar photovoltaic capacity by 2025, and almost 600 GW by 2030.

The new Alliance has endorsed the objective of reaching 30 GW of European manufacturing capacity by 2025, across the entire value chain. Reaching this objective would deliver €60 billion of new GDP per year in Europe and the creation of more than 400,000 new jobs.

The Alliance will also offer policy inputs to reduce Europe’s risk of supply and support domestic industry.

It will focus its work 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 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. Finally, 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 Europe’s current dependencies.

The Commission has political leadership on the Alliance. It supervises and acts as facilitator of its work.  The secretariat is run by EIT InnoEnergy, following the successful track record of the Batteries Alliance.

Background

The Commission endorsed the creation of a new European Solar PV Industry Alliance in October 2022, to support the objectives of the EU’s Solar Energy Strategy. The Strategy is an essential component of the REPowerEU plan, which set out how to massively scale-up and speed-up the production of renewable energy in Europe to regain our independence from Russian fossil fuels, and make our energy system more resilient.

The European solar PV Industry Alliance will be led by a Steering Committee, composed of the Commission, the secretariat, as well as SolarPowerEurope and the European Solar Manufacturing Council, in their capacity as key industry stakeholders. The Steering Committee will guide and monitor overall progress of the work of the Alliance and provide high-level policy direction. It will ensure consistency and coherence between the different Alliance work streams and with the overall objectives of the Alliance.

The Commission’s industrial alliances are the best tool to accelerate activities that would not develop otherwise. For instance, the Battery Alliance has played an essential role in ensuring that Europe can meet up to 90% of its demand with batteries produced in Europe by 2030. The European Clean Hydrogen Alliance is also ensuring industrial leadership and accelerate the decarbonisation of industry in line with its climate change objectives.

For More Information

European Solar PV Industry Alliance

Industrial alliances

REPowerEU

European industrial strategy

Quote(s)

Third countries are giving massive support to develop their clean tech industries and attract ours. The EU needs to up its game in terms of investment and regulatory environment for our clean tech manufacturing to thrive, create jobs in Europe and compete globally. The new European Solar PV Industrial Alliance is a key initiative to decrease dependencies and boost EU manufacturing capacity of solar PV technologies to 30 Gigawatt annually by 2025 across the full value chain.Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market – 09/12/2022

This year we are expecting to add 40 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.Kadri Simson, Commissioner for Energy – 09/12/2022