SolarPower Europe has launched a major policy push for an industrial strategy for solar in Europe, centred on construction of a 5GW PV module manufacturing complex.

The call, made by the sector advocacy body’s president, Christian Westermeir, was backed by over 35 EU solar supply chain players including Wacker, SMA, Total, Weidmuller, Voestalpine, SolarWatt, ABB, and Enel.

“SolarPower Europe has brought forward its policy asks to develop all segments of the manufacturing value chain in Europe,” said Westermeir. “We believe that the time is right to focus on developing the supply side policy framework to support the new market opportunities that SolarPower Europe has fought for, and won, on the Clean Energy Package and in the trade case [to remove anti-dumping measures against Chinese solar products], over the past year.”

Westermeir underlined that as demand for solar power is expect to rise to around 15GW a year in Europe “very soon”, there should now be “a concerted effort to deliver on every segment of the industrial value chain here in Europe”.

“We want to see all solar products, including wafers, cells and modules, made in the EU in the coming years,” he said.

SolarPower Europe policy director Aurélie Beauvais said that while the organisation had “seen success this year in driving the process to see the Clean Energy Industrial Forum created” by the European Commission, “now we have ambitious policy asks on the table and we expect our European policymakers to deliver”.

Beauvais added: “Not only do we want 5GW cell and module factories in Europe, driven through relaxation of state aid laws, but we also want to see specific regulatory support to ensure that finance is accessible, land is made cheaply available to manufacturers, energy costs are kept low and that administrative burdens to develop and grow solar manufacturing companies are addressed and reduced.”

SolarPower Europe, which recently brought in Walberga Hemetsberger as its new CEO from Austrian utility Verbund, said it would put its key recommendations to European Commissioner for Energy Miguel Arias Cañete in January, at the next high level EU Clean Energy Industrial Forum.

European solar build-out – thanks chiefly to Turkey – grew at nearly the global growth rate last year, increasing by 28.4% to 8.6GW in 2017, up from 6.7GW the year before.