Expert Says Europe's Solar Manufacturing Revival Hinges On Collaboration Among European Countries As The EU Sets New Record for Renewable Energy Use

[anyone@slrpnk.net]

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/17862259

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As the world races to decarbonise its energy systems, Europe faces mounting challenges in competing with global powerhouses like China and the US in PV manufacturing. To address these challenges, the European Technology and Innovation Platform for Photovoltaics (ETIP PV) has emerged as a key player in fostering collaboration, innovation and strategic policymaking among European countries.

“PV is a global technology,” Rutger Schlattmann, chair of ETIP PV and head of the Solar Energy division at Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin, tells PV Tech Premium. “The technology is developed worldwide, and some of the effort should be done across countries because these challenges are bigger than what individual countries – especially the smaller ones – can afford.”

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Meanwhile, the EU sets a new record for renewable energy use in 2024.

In the European Union (EU), 47% of electricity now comes from renewable sources like wind and solar, a new record according to a report from the think tank Ember. This is a far higher percentage than in other countries, including the United States and China, where about two-thirds of energy comes from fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and gas.

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The share of electricity produced by renewables jumped to 47% last year compared to 34% in 2019, in large part due to strong growth in solar and wind energy. In 2024, 11% of the EU’s electricity came from solar power, 17% from wind, and 24% from nuclear. The share produced by traditional fossil fuels dropped from 39% in 2019 to 29% in 2024.

[tal@lemmy.today]

China and the US in PV manufacturing

Uh. Do we do much PV manufacturing in the US?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/668749/regional-distribution-of-solar-pv-module-manufacturing/

This says that we do 2.2% of global production of PV cells, following Thailand at 2.3%, India at 2.7%, Vietnam at 3.4%, and China at 84.6%.

Also, it sounds like of those, Thailand and Vietnam basically have their industry because Chinese manufacturers moved production there to dodge US tariffs on Chinese cells.

https://www.csis.org/analysis/assessing-united-states-solar-power-play

In 2012, the Obama administration’s antidumping investigation led to tariffs that reduced Chinese solar imports from 50 percent to 15 percent by 2018 (see Figure 3). Chinese manufacturers then shifted production to Southeast Asia as a consequence, focusing initially on module assembly and more recently on making investments in wafer and cell production. It was only in 2023, by which time nearly 80 percent of solar imports were from Southeast Asia, that the Department of Commerce released its determination that the majority of the value-add in panels produced in Southeast Asia by some firms was Chinese, and therefore subject to existing antidumping duties.

In 2018, the Trump administration launched a new tranche of tariffs utilizing the Section 201 mechanism, which provides temporary relief to allow domestic industry to adjust to surging imports. Unlike the previous antidumping tariffs, the Section 201 tariffs were global. However, the administration allowed an exclusion for bifacial solar panels, which later became the majority of U.S. imports.

The Biden administration extended these tariffs while also placing a 24-month “bridge” to allow imports from Southeast Asia deemed necessary for solar deployment in the United States, underscoring just how central imports from those countries had become for domestic installers, which had lobbied for exemptions. During this period, imports from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam were shielded from both antidumping and Section 201 tariffs. In May of this year, the bridge period officially came to an end, exposing the vast majority of U.S. cell and panel imports to a tariff rate of 14.25 percent.

[anyone@slrpnk.net]

I am not sure what you want to say. In a nutshell, the article says that the EU must align its energy policies across countries to increase its own manufacturing output and, thus, gaining a higher degree of independence. This is true also for the U.S. and any country or bloc imho.

[tal@lemmy.today]

It's saying that the EU should be able to compete with the US and China. I'm saying that I don't think that the US is globally competitive in PV manufacturing.

[anyone@slrpnk.net]

Probably, and with the new president it is arguably not so easy in the near future for the U.S. I'm afraid.