With a Rod Sago and from London and Gerard Reed from Berlin. This is
Redefining Energy minutes today on in Redefining Energy, we're going to talk about the
future solar in Europe and we have the pleasure and privilege of having Walburga Hemmetzberger,
the CEO of Solar Europe, to discuss the development of Walburga. Welcome
to the show. Thanks a lot for inviting me. Happy to be on
the show. I'm a big fan. Thank you. First question for our
listeners, can you remind us a bit what our Europe does? Very happy
to Sola p our Europe. We're the association representing the European solar PV sector.
We're based in Brussels, so from our office we see the main building
from the European Commission, the Belmont and what we do is we unite more
than three hundred companies and national associations and we try to shape the best regulations
and the best business landscape for solar to grow. But we also bring the
industry together in events and provide some market intelligence to help solar business rife.
And we've been doing all of that quite successful in the last years. I'm
very happy that we just received the award Best European Association of the Year,
and I hope this is encouraging more companies to join us as well. Talking
about celebration, we were all at inter Solar in Munich last months, which
was kind of insane. I think we were one hundred and twenty thousand visitors.
What were your impression, Wilbarga. Indeed, it was the most buzzing
into solar. I have been witnessing more than three thousand exhibitors and you mentioned
the number of visitors. We also saw that flexibility is becoming more important,
so more exhibitors also exhibiting in storage and other flexibility solutions. And when we
were talking to companies, it was clear that the market environment is difficult,
but at the same time it is very buzzing and the sector remains positive for
the future. One thing that I was really taken back by was this balcony
solar, and the reason I was taken back by it was because it's just
so simple to install and it's so low cost to install. Yeah, I
keep playing with my head again and again because it sort of looks like solar
is just going to another level with sort of it's like plug and play solar.
That's what we're sort of saying, Yeah, definitely, and it's particularly
trending in Germany, and it came during the energy crisis where everyone was just
trying to install solar wherever. But now when you're talking about plug and play,
one other application that is, it seems is trending is fences because it's
cheaper to install solar than buying a fence. But indeed it is so versatile
that you can install it a bit everywhere and people are taking advantage of it.
And of course there are always questions about what's the best use for solar.
Is it going to be on rooftops, is it going to be as
you said, on fences, or there are questions sort of countries about large
archcultural land like Italy. So how do you see the landscape of how solar
is used? As you might know, we're producing outlooks every year, the
European market outlook and the global market outlook for solar PV and what we do
see is that both solar rooftop but also utility scale will be further developing.
It will be different in different countries, so some are putting more emphasis on
rooftop and some others are bigger when it comes to utility scale. During the
crisis, we have seen that two thirds of solar went onto roofs. But
going forward, we do think that it will be fifty to fifty because we
need both and we need as much as we can both on the ground and
on roofs and all kinds of other structures as well. Can I ask you
to talk a little bit about the size of the markers and just to put
it into respective, like last year to this year, is the market growing
and how you see it the next few years. In our European market outlook,
what we're showing is that the last three years we had stellar growth.
We were growing more than forty percent every year. Just last year, we're
installed more than sixty gigabot of solar and that's, by the way, the
latest figures. Because the European market out look at the end of last year,
we're still estimating fifty six fifty seven gigawa and we have been upscaling that
now. In our global market outlooks, so more than sixty gigaba of solar
that went online last year. Going forward, the growth will slow down in
terms of percentage of growth. But still we will continue growing also in the
next couple of years, and we estimate that very soon we will be having
a one hundred gigawat market in Europe. One hundred year gigawats per year,
right you think that's per year? Yes, okay, Amaze. These are
the good news, but of course it creates a lot of stress on the
grid. And that's probably good time to jump into your new report because you've
been addressing a lot of issues and remdiation. So can you introduce your reports
please, your latest report. Indeed, we published a report which we call
Mission Solar twenty forty a couple of days ago, and if I have to
summarize it in one sentence, is that we cannot continue business as usual,
but we need a flexibility revolution for the reasons that you mentioned already, Laurent.
We are entering into a phase where it will be more difficult to connect
solar to the grid because the grid development is not following as fast as we
would need, and we need to make sure that it is also remaining attractive
for solar developers to develop solar further. If we want to be serious about
the energy transition, and if we want to take full advantage of the benefits
of renobles and solar. In particular, we need to add much more flexibility
to the system. We have been looking in to maximizing supply side flexibility like
batteries, storage more generally and cross border electricity degrees, together with switching on
the demand side flexibility, and that is electrification big times. Because electrification we're
not progressing as fast as we should, so we need to go much faster.
Flexibility coming from heat pumps, from evs and from electrolyzers. And if
we're working with top notch energy system modelers attelis and the results are pretty convincing
and staggering up just to take you through them. We will substantially reduce greenhouse
gas emissions five hundred and fifty five million tons in twenty forty and that's the
annual reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. So this is virtually eliminating carbon emissions from
the power sector. So that's the first result. The second one is that
it's also much cheaper for the energy system. If we are embarking on a
flexibit revolution, we can already save thirty billion years per year in twenty thirty
and the staggering amount of one hundred and sixty billion by twenty forty. So
that's the second finding. The third finding is that it also comes much cheaper
for electricity users, and that's for sure a very good news for European industry
who is longing for more competitive energy prices. So the average day ahead power
price would be reduced by thirty three percent in twenty forty compared to today.
And the last finding is that you might think this is bad for the solar
business if electricity prices are reduced, but the contrary is true. It means
more revenues also for the solar business, and that is improving the business case
which at the moment, and that was also you know what we heard at
Intersolar for many players is a little bit under pressure because what it does is
that solar curtailment would fall by twenty forty. There is sixty six percent less
waste of solar electrons, so solar curtailment down, capture prices up, and
summarizing all of that, what it does for solar is that we will be
growing much much more than predicted. So you know that the European Commission has
a goal of seven hundred and fifty gigawa. With all of these measures taken,
we would easily get to one point two urvat by twenty thirty and two
point four to ter avot by twenty forty. Can I just ask you on
that there, when you talk about one point two terootts of capacity, what
does that mean in terms of how much of sort of the electricity system then
will be based on solar in terms of generation. When we're looking at those
figures in twenty thirty, we will be round about thirty percent, and that
is much higher in twenty fourteen. Okay, so that really is a revolution,
right, That's what we're saying. So we're basically what we're saying is
the future of the electricity system is based around solar. That's the reality spaced
around solar and wind obviously, but solar indeed will be depending a little bit
on the scenario we're looking at, we will be at thirty two percent,
and that same figure for twenty four it would be thirty nine percent. On
the other handlook batteries right now, give you two hours, and we can
envision that they're going to give you, let's say four hours, like in
California and of course, there's a very seasonal aspect, so there will be
a natural limit to how much you can grow solar. So I understand there's
a lot of room in front of us. There's a lot of short term
fix that we can do. But if we managed to run half of our
gride on solar, it's great. I'm not criticizing here. We need the
diversification certainly. It will alleviate the stress that you might have on the nuclear
park during the summer and almost eliminate any use of gas for six months,
which means gas more going to be used for backup or storage for the winter.
So what you're depicting is a market which really going to run on almost
twenty four seven on solar, say from March to September, and then we
need to design a market for the winter. Or am I just simplifying too
much? Yeah, this is why we're not looking at battery storage only,
even if I have to say that this will be a big chunk of it.
But we're also looking at, for example, electoralizers. We're also looking
at increasing the interconnection, and that's on the supply side and the demand side.
This is why we're also factoring in demand side flexibility. Here we look
at heat pumps at electric vehicles, so there is a whole bundle of flexibility
measures that we need to take. But it's true that battery will play a
major role in it. Well, well, Borga, you get your plate
full, but apparently you're also working on batteries, so you're over the place.
In conclusion, what's your take on batteries. Solar and storage are getting
more and more best friends, this is why, and batteries are playing a
very import in that. So we have been just recently also publishing our latest
European market OUTGOG for battery storage, and there we're covering both the residential storage
and a utility scale storage. We're looking into how the market is further developing,
and we also have some dedicated workstreams at Solo Powup where we are looking
at storage and where we are trying to push for more battery storage and storage
more generally. Fantastic, Well, Boga, thank you so much for coming
on the show. Thank you very much for al Berger's great to have you.
It was a great pleasure talking to you. Thanks for having me,
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