Solar powers ahead
Pressure to meet European Union renewable energy targets is likely to keep demand high even after the region's brisk take-up of the technology
European solar power capacity has already reached some 80 per cent of national projections for the end of the decade, underlining how growth has caught policymakers unawares.
Analysts have scaled back expectations for the European solar market, which until this year had underpinned soaring demand in the global photovoltaic industry. But it is still a key market for solar panels, led by Germany, Italy and France.
Solar's popularity, particularly in residential roof-top installations, has been founded on a combination of rapidly falling costs and generous subsidies which policymakers are now scaling back. Its outlook depends on how fast costs can continue to fall compared with rival low-carbon technologies, as countries try to meet national renewable energy targets in 2020. They are presently slipping behind those wider targets, meaning that governments will have to continue to pump money into renewable energy in general and solar can continue to grow if it steals market share from rivals. Under the European Union's renewable energy directive, member states have agreed to renewable energy targets by 2020 which are binding under national law.
Under the requirements of the directive, individual countries had to compile national renewable energy action plans and submit these by June 2010.
The plans described a trajectory for expected annual growth from 2010-2020 for each renewable energy technology.