Europe to install 1,249 MW of solar thermal this year
BRUSSELS, Belgium, July 13, 2005 (Refocus Weekly)
The solar thermal industry in Europe will install 1,248,940 kW of thermal capacity during 2005, according to the latest statistics from the European Solar Thermal Industry Federation.
Germany will be the lead country with 595,000 kW-th this year, up from
525,000 kW-th installed last year. That capacity was an increase of 4% over
2003, dominated by 472,500 of flat plate collectors and 52,500 kW-th of vacuum
collectors. By the end of 2004, Germany had 3,922,800 kW-th of installed solar
thermal capacity.
Austria will install 140,000 kW-th this year, compared with 127,816 last year
and 116,844 kW-th in 2003. At the end of last year, the national installed
capacity was 1,459,842 kW-th.
In third place will be Greece, expected to install 119,000 kW-th this year,
compared with 150,500 last year and 112,700 in 2003. The total installed
capacity by the end of 2004 was 1,978,690 kW-th.
Spain will be the fourth-largest installer this year, at 105,000 kW-th, compared
with
63,000 in 2004 and 49,000 in 2003, for a total capacity of 294,256 kW-th. Fifth
spot is France, expected to install 52,500 this year compared with 36,400 last
year and 27,230 in 2003, with a national total of 191,870 kW-th.
In France’s overseas territories, the installation of solar thermal collectors
has always been higher than the continental nation, although the market in
metropolitan France will be larger in 2005 for the first time. The report does
not tabulate capacity installed in non-EU regions.
The highest percentage growth of installations last year was 67%, reported both
in Portugal and Estonia. The Netherlands had a 5% decrease in installed capacity
over 2003.
“Solar thermal has often been ignored in national and international energy
statistics,” the report notes. “One of the key reasons was the lack of
energy-related data: solar thermal was counted in square meters of collector
area, which does not fit in with energy statistics. Therefore, solar thermal was
often the only energy technology measured in a non-energy unit, or not shown at
all.”
ESTIF now publishes statistical data primarily in kW-th to increase the
visibility of solar thermal and “to show more clearly that this technology can
substantially contribute to the overall energy supply,” it explains. The
conversion factor used to calculate capacity from collector area was agreed by
experts of the International Energy Agency Solar Heating & Cooling Programme and
solar thermal trade associations from Europe and North America, using a factor
of 0.7 kW-th per m2 of installed collector.
Germany is the traditional lead market for solar thermal in Europe, but that
country has returned to a slower growth rate which was not expected after strong
sales in 2003, and the report speculates that part of the reason is the
increased feed-in tariff for solar PV electricity, “which may have lured some
customers away from solar thermal.”
Enlarging the European Union has not substantially changed the unbalance in the
continent’s market for solar thermal, but there are significant changes in solar
thermal capacity in operation. Although Europe leads the world in most renewable
energy technologies, the EU holds only a small fraction of the world market for
solar thermal, which is dominated by China with annual domestic sales of 7 GW-th
(10 million m2 of collector surface). In Israel and Japan, the share of solar
thermal per inhabitant is much larger than in Europe.
“Solar thermal is a future oriented technology,” it adds. “In the next decade,
the global solar thermal market will develop to new dimensions. If Europe wants
to keep and extend its technological strength in this area, the domestic
European market must grow throughout the Union.”
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