Environmental Concerns
Availability of clean, safe and affordable energy to all citizens in sufficient quantities is a prerequisite for a sustainable society. In addition, the world energy supply should be sustainable in itself, meaning that the use of finite fossil resources has to be gradually replaced by the application of renewable energy technologies and that greenhouse gas emissions have to be decreased substantially.
To ensure the security and sustainability of future energy supply in Europe, we need diversified and renewable energy sources. The increasing share of renewable energy is a necessary ingredient of greenhouse gas mitigation policies, along with a strong requirement to improve energy efficiency.
Changing living standards and patterns to sustainable ones and ensuring the protection of the environment are now recognized as major policy goals. Presently almost one-third of the world population does not have access to commercial energy (in particular, to an electricity grid), which seriously hinders development, is linked to poverty and causes a variety of health problems.
In spite of the recent success of renewable energies in some areas, the growing global energy consumption still causes an increase in the consumption of fossil fuels and associated CO2 emissions. This highlights the urgency to develop and implement renewable energy technologies that can be made available to all people in urban and rural areas and that can make a substantial contribution to the increasing energy demand.
There is general consensus that photovoltaic conversion of solar energy (PV) is such a technology. PV has the unique property that arrays can be built ranging from a few milliwatts up to a multi-megawatt installation. PV modules can be part of a consumer product, mounted on roofs of houses, integrated in a building skin or assembled into large power stations.
Because of its modularity, it is accepted as a means to serve energy needs in dispersed and isolated communities. It can be designed to be very robust and reliable whilst at the same time it is quiet and safe. PV fits well in the existing infrastructure and it offers possibilities to make intelligent matches between electricity supply and demand. The total amount of solar energy reaching the earth’s surface represents several thousand times the world total energy consumption; the technical potential of converting solar energy directly into heat or electricity, including PV, is large: greater than 440.000 TWh/year i.e. about four times the earth’s total energy consumption.
In Europe, fitting the total surface of south-oriented roofs with PV equipment would enable full coverage of our electricity needs. This illustrates that PV could ultimately supply a substantial part or even the majority of our future electricity needs.
The coming decade is considered decisive in terms of which countries or global regions will dominate the future PV sector. In view of its excellent technology and market starting position, the EU has a unique opportunity to build a large and highly innovative economic sector, while at the same time developing a key building block for a sustainable energy supply.
This requires an ambitious and coherent policy on research and development (R&D), market incentives and communication, and the removal of barriers, as outlined in this proposed vision for 2030 and beyond.
