Solar alliance adds muscle to support EU manufacturing goal

EIT InnoEnergy, a sustainable energy innovation engine, will help deliver an additional 30GW of European solar manufacturing capacity by 2025 after being appointed as Secretariat to the EU Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Industry Alliance.

The Alliance, together with the European Commission, aims to develop an industry to supply the additional capacity, adding €60bn of new GDP every year in Europe and creating more than 400,000 new jobs (direct and indirect).

To deliver the EU Solar Strategy objectives, EIT InnoEnergy will lead the Alliance in its ambitions to re-develop, de-risk and accelerate the PV industry in Europe. This will help create a competitive position amid the booming demand for solar PV in Europe and globally.

To achieve these ambitions, the Alliance will follow a seven-pronged strategic action plan covering the key conditions for investments in PV manufacturing capacities in Europe.

This includes identifying manufacturing scale-up bottlenecks and facilitating access to finance.

It will also help provide framework for cooperation actions for development and uptake and develop international partnerships and global supply chain resilience.

EIT InnoEnergy is joined by SolarPower Europe and the European Solar Manufacturing Council on the alliance’s steering committee.

Diego Pavia, CEO of EIT InnoEnergy said: “We are honoured to be appointed to lead the work of the EU Solar PV Industry Alliance. As we have done for batteries through our work on the European Battery Alliance, we will now do for solar PV, leveraging our robust industrial value chain blueprint and network of stakeholders to achieve rapid development of manufacturing projects across the solar PV value chain for the benefit of EU citizens.”