Eager house owners and govt's climate push boost German solar industry's confidence

The business confidence index for Germany’s solar power industry has reached a new all-time high, as solar PV installations become more and more popular among house owners and the government’s ambitious renewable power targets promise to keep order books filled for the foreseeable future, industry lobby group BSW Solar has said. “Nearly one in six house owners in Germany plans to install a solar system for power and/or heat generation in the coming 12 months,” the group said based on a survey of more than 1,000 house owners in the country. According to BSW Solar, the main reasons for the solar push are rising energy prices, the desire to become more independent from market developments and the climate crisis. “That’s a prerequisite for meeting the solar power and climate action targets that have recently been revised upwards by the government,” BSW Solar head Carsten Körnig said. The industry would invest “massively” in ramping up its production capacities, banking on a swift implementation of the government’s targets. Alongside private house owners, many businesses also plan to ramp up their solar power arrays, with about one in four saying they want to install one on their company’s roofs within the next three years, a different survey conducted earlier this year had found.

Germany aims to increase its national solar power capacity from 60 gigawatts (GW) today to at least 215 GW by 2030 and 400 GW by 2040. Solar power’s share in power generation is projected to grow from about 10 to more than 25 percent by the end of the decade, to which end the government has announced a “solar acceleration package” as part of its Renewable Energy Act reform.