Illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios
European executives are threatening to take their money to the U.S., where lucrative new manufacturing incentives are helping to blunt the impact of high energy prices.
Why it matters: Stratospheric energy prices in Europe are clobbering manufacturers across the continent, including those that supply clean energy projects. Europe, not so long ago, was a place where climate tech thrived.
- Execs there are now eyeing America's new manufacturing perks with envy. When was the last time the U.S. led Europe on anything related to clean energy or climate change?
Driving the news: Manufacturing execs spoke during a webinar earlier this month hosted by SolarPower Europe, a trade group. PV Tech reported on the gathering.
- “It makes a lot of sense to invest in the U.S.," Moritz Borgmann, chief commercial officer at Meyer Burger, a Swiss solar PV manufacturer, said, adding that it's "simply not attractive, comparatively, to invest in Europe.”
Context: Manufacturers in Europe may stop producing as much as 35 GW of new solar components due to pricing pressures, an amount greater than all the solar capacity added in the EU last year.
Meanwhile: The head of renewable energy at the International Energy Agency called for new measures to mitigate the impacts of energy prices.
- “We really need to think out of the box on how to react to this extremely difficult and peculiar moment," Paolo Frankl said, per PV Tech. "Otherwise, I see a concrete risk that indeed the first investments go somewhere else, notably in the United States and India.”
