Spain: the next great solar market?
ATS Automation released its quarterly financials this week and talked about how Photowatt International, the solar unit it plans to spin off in an IPO later this year, is focusing its attention more on Spain these days and less on Germany, which in past years has been the world’s solar superpower. “Spain has become its largest market, representing 38 per cent of revenue, with Germany representing 31 per cent of revenue for the six months ended September 30, 2006,” ATS said. “This compares to 14 per cent and 58 per cent for Spain and Germany respectively for the six months ended September 30, 2005.”
Want to know why? Well, Germany is gradually lowering its subsidies for solar products because the industry has become so mature there. Meanwhile, Spain is trying to catch up with plans to introduce its own subsidies and regulations to spur solar growth. Most recently, it announced that it will soon (by next March) be mandatory under a new building code to install solar panels on all new buildings in the country. For new homes, that will mean solar thermal panels to provide hot water, while for commercial building the focus will be on solar PV to provide a certain percentage of electricity.
It’s an aggressive policy, one to certainly watch and compare as Ontario embarks on its standard offer program.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
November 15th, 2006 at 1:45 pm
I could just imagine the reaction if a law were proposed in the US to mandate a solar system for new construction.
Stephen
November 16th, 2006 at 3:10 am
I don’t know how your Spanish is but the site of Energ
November 16th, 2006 at 10:17 am
The strong fundamentals of the Spanish solar market have already led to some Canadian connections: Sustainable Energy Technologies Ltd., a Calgary-based developer of power inverters, is focusing on Spain as the first market for its solar inverters. The company has built a manufacturing facility in Spain and started high-volume production earlier this month to fulfill sales contracts. Xantrex has also had success in Spain this year with its solar products.
November 16th, 2006 at 12:18 pm
Stephen, as a US citizen, it is my sad displeasure to have to agree with you on that point. The problem though isn’t the US government or the lack of leadership thereof but the fact that we already are prohibited, in many cases, from installing fossil fuel independent energy devices on the roofs of our houses.
I live in Houston, Texas, a Sunbelt city, which has plenty of sunshine. We cannot put photovoltaic cells or thermal solar water panels on our houses to provide some electricity and hot water because of the deed restrictions we sign here when buying a house. Since we don’t have strong city zoning laws what we do on our property is regulated by non-government entities called home owner’s associations. They put these restrictions into the deeds.
It is scandalous that this goes on when we need to invest more in renewable. Our biggest challenge though will be what to do about air conditioning since in the months from June to September get so hot that people here literally die due to lack of air conditioning.
Geothermal could be used to cool houses but is very expensive to implement. It would be nice, if for once, the government provided credits or subsidies to homeowners who wish to use geothermal cooling.
November 17th, 2006 at 6:30 pm
Does this mean that without subsidies there is no market?