2023-11-13 19:51:55
The Elysée Palace personally took over the communication work when the construction of a solar module factory was announced near Sarreguemines in May. It is supposed to be the largest in Europe. Behind the investment of around 700 million euros is the company Holosolis, an offshoot of the Innoenergy Group, which in turn is backed by a colorful bouquet of investors from Siemens and Renault to the University of Stuttgart and the French Commissariat for Atomic Energy.
Fully operational from 2027, it plans to produce 10 million solar modules per year in Sarreguemines. According to the French government, this is around 8 percent of the quantity imported from China in 2022. Subsidies are flowing, but the exact amount has been agreed not to be disclosed.
For Paris, the project on the border with Saarland is not one of many, but part of the big plan to reduce Europe’s dependence on China’s solar industry – although the Norwegian company Rec Solar has just canceled its plans for a solar module factory there for cost reasons. “For years we have subsidized solar modules made on the other side of the world, now we will have solar modules made in France,” said Industry Minister Roland Lescure.
A “reflection that is underway”.
The massive expansion of solar energy, which the EU has set itself the goal of with the Repower EU Plan 2022, should no longer rely almost entirely on technology from Chinese manufacturers. Most recently, their market share in Europe was 91 percent, writes the consulting firm Rystad Energy.
In order to support the project, Paris is now apparently looking for help from Brussels. As the French newspaper “Le Figaro” reports, there is a letter to EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis calling for the partial closure of the European market for the import of Chinese solar modules to protect local manufacturers.
Accordingly, reference is made to Article 19 of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which allows such an approach for a limited period of time, and the French Finance and Economics Minister Bruno Le Maire, Energy Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher and Industry Minister Lescure are preparing to formally inform the EU Commission alert.
As of now, Le Maire has not signed anything of the sort, his spokeswoman said on Monday. The French Ministry of Energy said that so far it was just a “reflection that is underway”, and nothing more could be said about it at the moment.
Around a third of the total costs
The European solar industry has been pressing Brussels for protection against competition from China for months. At the beginning of September, the “Solar Power Europe” association warned of a wave of insolvencies. According to the association, the costs of producing solar modules in the EU are twice as high as in China. The European Commission has not yet acted on this.
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