Portugal

Electricity bill payers in nations as diverse as Germany, Greece, India and China should be aware new solar projects can now generate electricity cheaper for them than legacy coal and gas-fired plants.

The investment has been planned as part of the nation’s recovery and resilience plan to access EU funds for its post-Covid economic stimulus package. The spending plans of Portugal and Greece have also been approved by the European Commission in the last 48 hours.

The trade body has highlighted a lack of explicit PV industry support in EU member states which already host domestic manufacturers, such as Germany, France, Austria, Belgium and Lithuania, and says the focus on green hydrogen could exacerbate the solar trade deficit with Asia.

An investment of around €5 million will allow an old solar panel factory in the Beja district to reopen and create more than 40 new jobs. Galp Energia’s former director of innovation is part of the new team.

A total of 6 Covid-19 positives have just been detected among workers at the Solara4 plant, located in the Portuguese Algarve. According to information obtained by pv magazine, work at the facility has been partially stopped.

A newly proposed solar project in Portugal could almost double the nation’s installed PV capacity. The installation will likely require an investment of around €1 billion.

The Portuguese utility also wants to close all its coal power plants by 2025.

The French energy business said PV made up 21% of the 3 GW of new renewables generation capacity it installed last year, with the majority of its total new clean power facilities arriving in North America.

European renewables, including Spanish solar, made big gains as energy demand recovered before the second wave of Covid infections. Nuclear was a notable loser, in part because clean energy volumes in the north of the continent drove down power prices sufficiently to make reactors uncompetitive.