Photovoltaics in Europe

Our energy supply of tomorrow is renewable.

Stocks of fossil resources are becoming increasingly sparse, prices are rising rapidly, trade interdependencies are becoming greater and greater. Today we need decentralised resource-saving energy supply solutions that are technologically innovative and affordable.

For these reasons, the EU has established the EU Directives for Renewable Energies. By 2020, 20% of the energy demand must be covered by renewable energies.

Within the European mix of renewable energies, solar energy plays an important role. Within the mix, the share of solar energy of all energy-generation installations newly installed between 2008 and 2009 is 21%.

Today, Europe is the most important solar energy market of the world. At the end of 2009, 70% of all installed photovoltaic systems were installed in Europe. In the long term, the US, China, India and other countries outside of Europe will follow.

Currently, almost all EU countries have fixed feed-in tariffs for generated solar energy. For a detailed overview of the subsidy situation in all 27 EU countries see www.res-legal.eu. However, since the solar industry will soon be able to grow even without government subsidies and some countries will achieve the so-called grid parity, the future significance of solar energy for Europe will remain great.

The European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) estimates that solar energy will continue to show a double-digit growth in the coming years. EPIA expects a photovoltaics’ market share of 4% (vbaseline scenario) to 12% (paradigm shift scenario) by 2020. Today the photovoltaics’ market share is 1%.

• EPIA: Global market outlook for photovoltaics until 2014
• www.setfor2020.eu