Europe’s solar technology specialists may need up to €7 billion (US$8.51 billion) in capital investment in order to scale up domestic manufacturing to be globally competitive, according to a panel of industry leaders.
President Joe Biden has said this is the “decisive decade” for combating climate change, as he unveiled a new goal to at least half US emissions by 2030.
There is likely to be demand across Europe for producing hydrogen from renewable energy, but the right regulatory frameworks and legislation need to be in place for the green hydrogen industry to find success.
Green hydrogen may become cheaper than natural gas by 2050, falling by 85% over the next 30 years, but declining costs in the solar sector will be crucial for the nascent technology's growth.
EDP, Iberdrola and BayWa r.e. are among the signatories of a new charter that calls on Europe to “accelerate and massively deploy” additional renewables capacity to support the continent’s green hydrogen ambitions.
A European Commission-backed project has been launched to scale up Europe’s PV manufacturing industry and capture the continent’s “booming demand” for solar equipment.
The rapid scale-up of solar capacity in the European Union drove the growth of renewable electricity generation, which overtook that of fossil fuels for the first time last year.
The EU is on track to achieve between 22.8% to 23.1% renewables in gross final energy consumption in 2020 as the continent experiences a “clear paradigm shift” towards solar and wind.
The European Union has pinned its hopes for an economic recovery in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic on green and digital technologies. Molly Lempriere looks at the part solar could play as details are fleshed out
The European Parliament has voted in favour of a climate law that would raise emissions reduction targets and oblige EU member states to be carbon neutral by 2050.
