France has submitted an updated national energy and climate plan that aims to increase installed solar photovoltaic capacity to 60GW by 2030. The new draft aims to add at least 14GW to the previous NECP submitted in 2019, which targeted 40GW of solar capacity by 2030.
France aims to increase its cumulative solar installed capacity to between 75-100GW by 2035, although this increase is likely to be smaller compared with neighboring countries such as Spain and Italy, which aim to install 100% by 2030 respectively. 76GW and 80GW of solar PV. Spain in particular plans to nearly double its previous solar PV target.
Nuclear energy appears to remain an important part of the country's electricity decarbonization goals, with the word nuclear being mentioned 104 times and solar 19 times, many of them related to solar thermal, as shown in the draft NECP. In 2022, nuclear energy will account for 62.2% of France's electricity production, while wind and solar will account for 8.7% and 4.2% respectively.
As of the end of 2022, France's installed solar photovoltaic capacity is 15.7GW, of which 2.6GW will be added in 2022, accounting for more than half of the total new renewable energy capacity in 2022, reaching more than 5GW. Other updated targets include France's plans to add 5.5-7GW of solar capacity per year. Most of the new capacity is expected to come from utility-scale solar accounting for 65%, while rooftop commercial and industrial will account for 25% and residential solar the remaining 10%.
At the upstream level, French start-up activity has increased, with a series of announcements in 2023 regarding new module assembly plants, which are expected to become operational in the coming years. These include Carbon's plans to build a 5GW/3.5GW cell and module assembly plant in the south of France; Holosolis aiming to build a 5GW module assembly plant targeting rooftop residential, commercial and industrial rooftops and agrivoltaics; and Heliop targeting 100MW PERC raised €10 million for its lightweight module assembly line, which is expected to be operational in 2024.
Germany's solar power target exceeds Italy, Spain and France combined
Although the deadline is set for June 30, 2023, several countries have yet to upload their latest NECP drafts, including France and Germany, which released their own drafts earlier this month.
As the EU's leader in solar installed capacity, Germany's new target is unmatched among the 27 countries as it expects to reach 215GW of installed solar PV capacity by 2030, with an annual target of 22GW and 400GW by 2040. When the German government updated its solar targets for the end of the century last year, it had already announced two targets for 2030 and 2040.
Germany’s new solar PV NECP target is more than double the country’s previous forecast of 98GW set in the 2019 NECP. The new target of 215GW by 2030 is larger than the total planned capacity of Italy, Spain and France, which have targets of 80GW, 76GW and 54-60GW respectively.