At the highpoint of its solar craze in the mid-2000s, Germany sought to establish long-term global leadership in the sector. Politicians encouraged solar companies to set up shop in eastern German regions that had been hit hard by the deindustrialisation that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall.
But the boom was short-lived. Worldwide overcapacity, substantial feed-in-tariff cuts and brutal declines in panel prices have driven several high-profile German solar firms to bankruptcy, while others have had to endure painful restructurings to survive.
Q-Cells,
