The Federal Minister of Economics first wants to find out who would be interested in building a solar factory in Germany.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin, Dusseldorf The Federal Ministry of Economics is planning subsidies for the construction of solar factories in Germany. This was confirmed by a spokesman for the ministry at the request of the Handelsblatt. Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) had already indicated at Industry Day last Monday that his ministry was preparing new tenders for the solar industry.
“Germany and Europe need their own substantial manufacturing capacities for central transformation technologies, for example for wind turbines, solar systems, electrolysers and batteries,” Habeck said. This is not only an economic question, but also a question of reason and necessity in terms of security policy.
The Chinese company Longi, the largest solar company in the world, announced on Wednesday that it was planning its first plant in Europe – preferably in Germany. One is “already very intensive in the preparations,” said Longi founder and President Zhenguo Li only in an interview with the Handelsblatt.
Gunter Erfurt, head of the solar group Meyer Burger, welcomed Habeck’s announcement. At the moment, Europe is not a good place to invest in the solar industry and has openly threatened to shift production to the US. “We are currently seeing many initiatives in many regions that offer local companies a lot of funding and industrial policy support if they produce technologies for the energy transition,” he said in the Handelsblatt podcast Today.
Because supply chain chaos, inflation and the energy crisis have led to project delays of months in some cases over the past two years, the call for an independent European solar industry is getting louder and louder. The market for solar technology is currently dominated almost exclusively by Chinese companies, all of which operate their gigafactories in Asia.
There is a tough price war
While the demand for solar energy has continued to rise worldwide in recent years, the German market has imploded at the same time. Since the lavish subsidies were massively reduced, there has been a tough price war. The winners were photovoltaic companies from China, which meanwhile produced more than 90 percent of the modules sold worldwide.
Economics Minister Habeck now wants to rebuild the solar industry in her native country. “An own substantial production in the field of solar energy would strengthen the technological and energy-political sovereignty of Germany and the EU,” says the Ministry of Economic Affairs. It is also about “giving a strong response to the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)”.
To this end, the first step will be to initiate an expression of interest procedure in order to find out which companies want to build up or expand production capacities. Subsidies are then to be distributed in auctions, industry insiders report to the Handelsblatt. First of all, the size of the auctions should be limited to 10 to 20 gigawatt projects.
Just a month ago, Holosolis announced that it would build Europe’s largest solar factory to date. Holosolis is a joint venture between the sustainable investment group EIT Innoenergy, the French real estate company IDEC Group and the solar system provider TSE.
Not only some European companies are likely to be interested in the subsidies, but also industry leader Longi and other mega-corporations from China.
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