Page 42 - A Comprehensive Guide to Solar Energy Systems

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Solar Power in Europe: Status

and Outlook

Michael Schmela, Thomas Döring, Andrés Pinto-Bello Gómez,
Alexandre Roesch
SOLARPOWER EUROPE, BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
m.schmela@solarpowereurope.org

3.1 The Past: Solar Developments in Europe (2000–16)

In spite of Europe leading global solar developments for many years, it is currently in a
transition phase, trailing far behind the rapidly growing solar markets in Asia and in the
United States. Last year was another disappointing year for solar in Europe. With only
6.7 GW of newly installed PV capacity in 2016, the European solar power market shrank
by 22% year-on-year. This drop comes after a small increase in 2015 that followed several
years of market contraction, which started in 2012. This contraction began as a result of
the European solar pioneering countries slashing their previous lucrative feed-in tariff in-
centive programs.
Last year, Europe’s installation volume dropped by 1.9 to 6.7 GW from 8.6 GW in 2015.
The 2016 PV additions are basically level with the annual PV capacity that was added 7 years
earlier in 2009, Europe installed 6.6 GW on its way up to its 22.5 GW climax in 2011. The Eu-
ropean solar PV annual grid connections from 2000 to 2016 for selected countries are given
in Fig. 3.1.

3.1.1 Leading European Solar Markets
The European leading solar market remained the same in 2016 as it was in 2015: the United
Kingdom achieved that title for the 3rd year in a row. However, with only 1.97 GW grid
connected in the United Kingdom, newly installed capacity decreased by 52% from the
4.1 GW, added the year before. The UK government’s abandoning solar support is the main
reason for Europe’s demand drop in 2016. There was only one short spike in the United
Kingdom in 2016 when 1.2 GW was grid-connected by March in response to the Renew-
able Obligation Certificate Scheme’s termination for larger solar systems at the end of the
first quarter; for the rest of the year, monthly PV additions remained mostly below 50 MW.
A cut of the country’s other solar support mechanism, a feed-in tariff (FIT) for small instal-
lations, had been announced a few days after the Climate Summit in Paris in December
2015. The UK’s Solar Trade Association published a study in June 2016 stating that one out

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