Germany: 400GW in 2040

Carsten Kornig, General manager of BSW-Solar, Germany's national solar association, told PV Tech Power: "Solar has been the most popular form of energy in Germany for many years. The new PV installed capacity in 2023 is 15GW, almost double the previous year."

Kornig noted that from 2026 onwards, the government aims to add 22GW of new capacity per year, which would bring Germany's total PV installed capacity to 215GW by 2030 and 400GW by 2040. Most importantly, these targets are in line with those contained in Germany's latest National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) submitted by the German government to the European Union, and Germany's 215GW solar target is by far the highest in all of Europe, more than double the 80GW PV installation target of Italy, the second most ambitious country.

A sign of the expansion of solar energy in Germany is the strong government support for solar energy, and the Solarpaket I legislation passed in April this year has further boosted this progress. The legislative framework introduces a series of changes to German solar legislation, including an increase in the feed-in tariff for industrial and commercial solar projects by €0.015 ($0.016)/kWh, a move aimed at making distributed solar more commercially viable and thus more attractive to potential investors.

Netherlands: Benefit from supportive legislation, subsidies

The Dutch solar industry is also benefiting from the growing distributed industry.

In 2022, the rooftop solar industry alone added 1.8GW of installed capacity, accounting for 46% of the new installed capacity that year, pushing the total installed capacity of the Dutch solar industry to surpass that of France by the end of 2023.

SolarPower Europe expects this growth to remain stable in the coming years, with new installations in the roofing sector expected to reach 1.6GW in 2023 and 1.8GW in 2024. As is the case in Germany, the sector has also benefited from supportive legislation, such as the Sustainable energy and energy Saving Investment subsidy, whose funding increased to €600 million this year to subsidize the cost of equipment such as heat pumps and solar modules.

The Netherlands is also a firm investor in floating PV, with a funding programme announced in April 2023 setting aside €44.5 million to add 3GW of offshore PV capacity to the Dutch energy mix. The government aims to combine these floating PV projects with offshore wind farms, building floating components between turbines to take advantage of existing energy infrastructure along the coast.

France: 65GW by 2030

France is the third largest solar market in Western Europe, with about 20GW of electricity in operation and 3.1GW of new capacity in 2023. This is a record for France, surpassing the previous annual installed capacity record of 2.8GW set in 2021, and about three times the total annual installed capacity for 2012-2019, which never exceeded 1.02 GW during the period.

The French Renewable Energy Association has also set a series of ambitious targets for the solar industry, aiming for 65GW of in-service capacity by 2030 and 115GW of installed capacity by 2035. These figures are more ambitious than the national renewable energy plan France submitted to the European Union and help France regain its position in the top two among Western European countries.

Making solar energy an attractive investment target has been a top priority for the government, which wants to encourage private investment into the sector to achieve some of its goals. The government plans to hold tenders for 3.2GW of new solar projects annually, and while these tenders have historically been undersubscribed, the government held tenders for 129 projects totaling 1.5GW in September 2023, setting a new record for tender capacity.

Less mature markets: Austria, Belgium

In addition to the three largest solar markets in Western Europe, smaller solar markets, led by Austria, also saw considerable growth.

Austria crossed the 1GW threshold for the first time in 2022, expanding its total PV installed capacity to 6.2GW in 2023 and aiming to achieve a cumulative installed capacity of 41GW by 2040.

Austria's Renewable Energy Expansion Act, passed in 2021, stipulates that by 2030, Austria's electricity consumption must meet 100% of the demand for renewable energy, the law aims to reach 27TWh of renewable energy generation by 2030, of which 11TWh must be solar power.

In order to achieve these goals, the Austrian government has significantly increased photovoltaic subsidies, with financial support almost doubling six-fold from around €110 million ($118.5 million) in 2021 to €600 million ($646.5 million) in 2023. The government is also supporting 700MW of new installed capacity per year through the CFDS scheme.

Belgium, meanwhile, is adding less capacity in 2023 than Austria, with just 1.8GW of new projects coming on stream, but its solar sector as a whole is much larger, with 9.9GW in operation. As in Austria, much of this growth is due to supportive government policies.trina solar panels