19 JUNE 2023be a hurdle for investment. PV achieves often even a lower cost of electricity production than electricity market prices. Industries should NOT compare IRR of PV with their core business investments but evaluate them as a real estate asset, so investment hurdles should go down.The financial support hence is not needed anymore and should shift towards the sustainability standards we wish to achieve in Europe. In the definition of these standards Europe should consider CO2 emission values for the production of PV modules and include/quantify social responsibility norms. This will put local/European manufacturers in favor forcing to respect social rules and environmental behavior we wish to get applied in the world. For some equipment this will indeed push European manufacturing by increasing some hurdles for import. You can think about inverters and transformers with high value and technical complexity. I am not convinced that Europe will ever be able to take over the module production (new sand mines to be permitted to produce polysilicon, large scaled factories for wafers, ...) but it might create incentives to improve Social Responsibility and awareness about environmental behavior from the Chinese suppliers. A second European hurdle are the technical requirements imposed by the grids. In every country a different set of technical rules is applicable. There are IEC norms on which equipment must comply , but the features to be provided in the global E-design seem to vary in every country. The EPC-contractors are hesitating to cross some internal European barriers because in every country you need a specific partner with local knowledge about the grid. Some harmonization should however be obvious as many of the grids are facing the same problems of congestion, concentration of renewable assets and pollution of the grid. As the European grid is physically interconnected, it makes the cooperation between the national grids more complicated by applying different rules for renewable assets, curtailment rights and obligations regarding delivery of reactive power to optimize power quality.A more aligned regulation, might speed up the growth of PV and renewables in general, in Europe. It might create a more standardized volume market which can lead to more competitivity of the PV installations.If Europe really wants to succeed in their Green Deal with also a European renewable manufacturing industry behind it, there should be definitely much more "Europe" in place. This specific PV industry has become a commodity volume market where small niches can never survive without costly support and will never lead to the boost of investments we all need to reach our Climate targets. Industries should NOT compare IRR of PV with their core business investments but evaluate them as a real estate asset, so investment hurdles should go down
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