European Solar Manufacturing Council

The production of PV ingots and wafers remains the most highly concentrated of all the production stages in the silicon solar supply chain. Yet efforts to re-establish production in Europe and the United States are not for the faint-hearted.

Rather than pondering the introduction of trade measures against solar imports, Europe should be pragmatic about its short-term reliance on Asian panels while moving now to nurture and incentivize a domestic supply chain of the future.

An article published in French newspaper Le Monde recently sparked a war between two prominent European PV associations – the decades-old SolarPower Europe and the three-year-old newcomer the European Solar Manufacturing Council. pv magazine looked into the matter to unpick the potential long-term impact the rift could have on the sector.

The threat of catastrophic climate change, as well as increasingly obvious economic benefits, make it advisable, indeed essential, to convert our entire energy system to a sustainable system, based on renewable energy (RE) as soon as possible. The two main pillars of our future RE-based energy system will be power generation from PV and wind. In Germany alone, according to detailed studies by Fraunhofer-Institut für Solare Energiesysteme ISE, we will need at least about 300 GW of PV and an equally large amount of wind power.

If Europe is to come up with its own Inflation Reduction Act moment, and incentivize a return of EU solar manufacturing leadership, it must lift state-aid related restrictions on the PV manufacturers who have announced a willingness to build 30 GW of production lines.

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.

The European Solar Manufacturing Council says a decision by policymakers to disregard the carbon footprint of imported solar products ‘makes absolutely no sense’. Talk of ‘jobs which require a rather low qualification’, meanwhile, is unlikely to heal the widening rift with solar project developers and panel installers.

This week, pv magazine headed to Marseille for the 36th edition of the EU PVSEC conference and exhibition. During the week-long show, leading universities and research institutes presented their latest results to the industry and public. As the conference heads into its final afternoon, we’ve put together five key takeaways from this year’s event.

The former director of Fraunhofer ISE will be officially elected at a general assembly planned for September. The ESCM wants a strong Europe to be part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and also pay attention to sustainability.