With the Net-Zero Industry Act, the EU has set a target for 2024 to establish at least 30 gigawatts of solar manufacturing capacity in Europe by 2030 – enough to cover 40 per cent of Europe’s annual solar expansion from domestic production. The Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA), now presented by the European Commission, could breathe life into this target. Instead, there is a risk of a spectacular failure to meet the target: the Commission’s proposal of 4 March 2026 is too weak and too slow – it runs the risk of undermining the strategic promise of the NZIA. Yet the IAA could serve as affordable insurance against rising energy prices and geopolitical dependencies.
The IAA should be more ambitious than the NZIA – not the other way round. As remarkable as it is that the EU intends to introduce ‘Made in Europe’ requirements for certain market segments (primarily public tenders and renewable energy auctions) for the first time, these requirements are equally unambitious. For the production of solar systems, ‘Made in Europe’ is to apply to only two of eight key components in the value chain: solar cells and inverters. Manufacturers of modules, wafers, glass, polysilicon or mounting structures come away empty-handed – even though it is precisely here that European capacities exist or are on the verge of investment decisions. At least three key components must therefore be included in the criteria, with a clear roadmap for the gradual inclusion of the remainder.
The planned geographical opening to EU free-trade partners is uncontrollable: it would throw open the doors to Chinese-controlled producers in Vietnam, Egypt or South Korea – and directly undermine the NZIA’s reshoring objective. Union Origin must remain restricted to the EU and close allies such as Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Otherwise, the IAA would ultimately amount to nothing more than a watered-down and more expensive NZIA – the latter already requires that four key components originate from countries other than China, including inverters, solar cells and modules.
The industry cannot wait until 2030. The IAA is not due to bring the ‘Made in Europe’ criterion into force for another four years – in 2030, by which time the original NZIA target is already supposed to have been achieved. This is not a mere implementation detail, but a contradiction in terms that is also recognised outside the solar industry – and raises fundamental questions about the reliability of EU targets. The IAA must therefore come into force in 2027, and the ‘Made in Europe’ criterion must come into force alongside it.
For solar is no longer a niche topic, but a core security issue. Photovoltaics is the only energy technology that becomes cheaper year on year, can be deployed decentrally anywhere and scales rapidly. A distributed solar architecture with millions of local power sources makes Europe structurally less vulnerable. At the same time, photovoltaics is becoming the most important lever for global decarbonisation: this secures food, water and geopolitical stability. It is therefore not about industrial policy as an end in itself, but about resilience as a locational advantage.
European solar production is a form of insurance – at surprisingly low cost. For whilst Europe is making good progress in the construction of solar power plants, its policy of focusing on cheap Chinese solar modules has created a new energy dependency. More than 90 per cent of solar modules and solar cells come from China, and around 80 per cent of inverters – the brain of the systems.
Behind this, as documented by the OECD, lie dumping practices by Chinese companies. For the EU, this is not just a trade issue, but also a security risk: anyone who imports strategic energy infrastructure on this scale makes themselves vulnerable to blackmail. Yet, according to the European Commission, ambitious production in Europe would not even add one per cent to the electricity bill. The cost of securing the solar industry as a safeguard of sovereignty is therefore minimal – the strategic benefit is enormous.
Europe does not need to reinvent an industry – it must scale up existing strengths. It was European research institutes and engineering firms that, over the past decades, developed the know-how behind the triumph of photovoltaics and brought it to the world. China has strategically appropriated this knowledge – not always in compliance with intellectual property rights. Nevertheless, Europe still has hundreds of companies manufacturing machinery, modules, inverters, silicon or energy storage systems. In addition, numerous manufacturing projects for production machinery, cells, wafers and polysilicon are awaiting framework conditions that make investment viable. It is the IAA’s task to create these conditions in line with ‘Made in Europe’ requirements, thereby making the NZIA target achievable by 2030. It is now up to MEPs and the ambitious EU Member States to pave the way for this.
By Christoph Podewils, Secretary General of the European Solar Manufacturing Council (ESMC). The Brussels-based business association represents more than 60 companies across the European photovoltaic value chain. For years, he has been advocating for a level playing field with Chinese competitors.
Opinion pieces reflect the views of their authors and do not necessarily represent those of the editorial team.