HOW TO ENSURE THE COMPETITIVENESS OF PV IN THE EUROPEAN ELECTRICITY MARKETS?THE PV PARITY PROJECT

摘要

In the past few years the PV sector has experienced a very rapid increase in terms of installed capacity. PV was the 1stsource of electricity installed in Europe in 2011, with 21.6 GWp of new power generation capacity. As comparison to othertechnologies, during the same period of time there were only new capacity of 9.6 GW for wind power plants, 9.7 GW forgas power plants, 2.1 GW for coal power plants, 0.6 GW for large hydro power plants and a decommissioning of 1.1 GWfuel oil power plants and 6,2 GW of nuclear power plants. Based on these figures, PV has been seen as a potential andfeasible electricity source in Europe.In the upcoming years the installed capacity of PV has to further increase to reach the “20-20-20” binding targets of20% of RES in energy consumption until 2020, which corresponds to 30-35% of the electricity demand from RES,according the Renewable Energy Directive (2009/28/EC) and beyond, until 2050, to achieve the targets of the EnergyRoadmap 2050. According to the High RES scenario of the Energy Roadmap 2050, the share of RES in electricity shouldreach 75% in gross final energy consumption and 97% in terms of electricity production. Among the other renewablepower technologies, PV will provide a relevant contribution to reach these ambitious European targets. To achieve suchcontribution from RES electricity, several key challenges need to be further addressed. At the time being, the status quo inthe field of electricity generation is still based on a centralized concept, where electricity producers from small-scalerenewable energy systems, such as photovoltaic systems, are forced to adapt their needs, in terms of legal and regulatoryframework, grid access and market design rules, to the infrastructures developed to support a centralized approach forelectricity production. The PV parity project aims at defining an appropriate policy and legal framework to ensure asustainable PV market growth. To reach this ambitious target, during the PV Parity project, European and National policymakers have been provided with objective and transparent recommendations to implement support schemes to ensure thatPV will become competitive with other electricity sources in Europe and to go beyond the PV competitiveness, in order toensure a sustainable PV market growth until 2020, 2050 and beyond.