Manufacturing

Solar power is the backbone of the future electricity system, providing affordable, secure and clean electricity supply to EU citizens and businesses. The EU reached 406 GW of installed solar PV capacity by the end of 2025, surpassing the REPowerEU milestone of 400 GW for that year and marking a fivefold increase compared to 2015. Despite a temporary slowdown in annual installations, Europe is still projected to reach 718 GW of solar PV by 2030 under the most likely scenario.

This important market offers a unique opportunity to redevelop the solar PV industry in Europe to support Europe’s competitiveness and security. By ensuring a diversification of supply for the EU project development industry, the EU bolsters its resilience to shocks, such as module shortages, geopolitical tensions, and increasing international competition for investments in solar PV supply chains. Strengthening solar manufacturing along the whole value chain will also increase the sustainability of the technology and support the energy transition.

Europe has unique strengths to count on when reinvesting into a solar industry. Our high-performing research and development ecosystem offers a distinct advantage in the emerging advanced technologies soon to dominate the market, such as heterojunction, back-contact or perovskite. Europe also has an enduring industrial ecosystem, notably for balance-of-system (BOS) components and inverters, or in PV manufacturing equipment, whose competitiveness relies on close integration with Europe's Research and Innovation landscape.

30 GW is the manufacturing capacity the EU industry aims to reach by 2030, a goal that will require about €30 billion in investment and strong implementation of the NZIA to ensure fair competition.

81–93% of PV components are supplied by China. This shows the importance of reshoring solar manufacturing to Europe.

ach GWp/a of EU PV manufacturing capacity creates up to 2700 new jobs and generates €12.6–66.4 Mn/a per GWp/a in tax and social revenues.

The Manufacturing Workstream

SolarPower Europe’s Manufacturing Workstream works to foster the right conditions for redeveloping solar PV manufacturing in the EU through a decisive European industrial policy.

It monitors and contributes to the various critical EU legislative files that support the solar PV industry (efor example, the Industrial Accelerator Act, Net-Zero Industry Act implementation, Clean Industrial State Aid Framework, revision of the Public Procurement Directives, and Made-in-EU provisions) and provides high level data on EU Manufacturing capacities through reports SolarPower Europe report Reshoring Solar Manufacturing to Europe: A Cost Gap Analysis and a Policy Impact Simulation).

As a Steering Committee member of the European Solar Industry Alliance (ESIA), SolarPower Europe’s Manufacturing Workstream also contributes to the ESIA Discussion Forums. These meetings offered additional platforms for exchange, addressing key manufacturing topics like the implementation of the Net-Zero Industry Act, public procurement, project finance, and supply chain equipment.

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