Europe has committed to being a climate-neutral society by 2050.1 This is an ambitious target, which has been complicated by the energy crisis and the Ukraine conflict, as well as efforts to replace the import of Russian gas.
For the last decade, “tariff” has been an all-too-familiar term in the solar industry, evoking a mix of strong opinions among stakeholders. In 2012, the Obama administration first imposed tariffs on certain imported cells and modules in an attempt to rescue the declining solar manufacturing industry. In 2018, the Trump administration expanded this approach with the imposition of Section 201 solar tariffs.
Plans to reestablish a thriving European solar manufacturing base are underway. As part of the UP Initiative’s upcoming Q2 2022 theme on the topic, pv magazine spoke to Johan Lindahl, secretary general of the European Solar Manufacturing Council to understand the challenges and opportunities for domestic manufacturers, and to discover how they could reach the target of forming a full 100GW solar value chain by 2030
We expect continued advancements in solar power technologies will yield further cost declines in solar power projects over the coming decade. The cost of solar power has declined significantly over the past decade, with the Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE) for solar falling from a weighted average of USD378/MWh USD248/MWh in 2010 to USD68.4/MWh in 2019. According to financial advisory and asset management firm Lazard, the LCOE for utility-scale solar power reached USD36/MWh in 2021.
Global solar photovoltaic (PV) installations will see over 20% growth in 2022 and surpass the 200GW (DC) barrier for the first time, at a total investment of at least $170bn, according to a new report.
IHS Markit’s study predicts solar PV installations to experience double-digit growth in 2021.
Continued growth through 2022 would mark the second year in a row to experience double-digit growth of global installations in a high-price environment, the report highlighted.
A year after Ursula von der Leyen declared her ambition of making Europe the world’s first carbon-neutral continent, officials and business leaders have discussed whether the coronavirus pandemic would hinder – or help – that target.
The European Commission president had said in 2019 it would be achieved through the European Green Deal, a wide-ranging set of objectives that include renovating buildings and cleaning up air and water.
In the future, 2021 could well be remembered as the year that world leaders got serious about combating climate change. This is the year that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced that human activity has unequivocally and irreversibly altered the climate.
