Solar energy
Energy in Europe: ”Solar and storage is like a match made in heaven”
These words come from Dries Acke, Deputy CEO at SolarPower Europe. We had the chance to ask him and the European solar organisation how we can expect solar and storage to develop in Europe.
20-02-2025
The European solar organisation SolarPower Europe is at the forefront of solar energy’s development on the European continent. With a new EU Commission and the time being, European competitiveness and energy security are hot topics on the solar power agenda. So is energy storage.
We had the opportunity to ask SolarPower Europe and Deputy CEO, Dries Acke, which role solar and storage will play in Europe looking into 2025 and beyond from their perspective and analysis. Battery energy storage is an affordable and convenient solution to match energy demand needs in an energy landscape with more and more renewables. Together, solar and storage are expected to play a key role.
Deputy CEO at SolarPower Europe, Dries Acke explains how.
“The European Union is at the crossroads today. We have a new leadership, a new Commission but the agenda is very clear. We need to deliver the Green Deal for our European competitiveness and for our energy security. And solar has shown that it’s an important part of that goal. Solar has delivered that to Europe for the time when Europe needed it most. We come out of years of energy crisis and thanks to solar and the growth, the unprecedented growth in solar,we have seen many European businesses and citizens being protected from the high energy prices, reducing the prices and actually benefitting our security and our competitiveness,” says Dries Acke, Deputy CEO at SolarPower Europe.
Storage needs to grow by at least a factor 10
“Now, we do need to take the next step, and the next step is to accelerate the energy transition, and this is where solar and storage really become essential. Solar and storage is like a match made in heaven because it allows all these clean and cheap solar electrons to reach the European consumers reliably, affordably and around the clock. We have done some numbers ourselves. We have published a report called Solar Mission 2040 where we can really show these benefits. Solar needs to grow at least three times by 2030 – storage needs to grow by at least a factor 10 by 2030. This is how we do energy security; this is how we do energy competitiveness”, Dries Acke explains.
Storage to improve the business case for solar
“The combination of solar and storage and accelerating the energy transition is not a far away dream, it’s reality today. Solar is booming, it continues to grow every year, but so does storage and especially battery energy storage, mostly in combination with solar. Together we have calculated that this can improve massively the business case for solar as well. We see capture prices going up again by 25 percent even before 2030 and that is the way to go. It’s not something that needs to come in the future. If we look at the costs of storage systems which have also been declining of the last years and the investments and the amount of capacity that is coming on line it’s starting to match also what solar needs so absolutely this is something that is delivering right now, certainly before 2030 and I think it will become the beginning of a new electricity system based on solar and batteries in Europe,“ says Dries Acke.
Read the report from SolarPower Europe:
Mission Solar 2040 - Europe's Flexibility Revolution