The Alliance was launched at the backdrop of the REPowerEU plan, the EU initiative to put an end to its dependency from Russian fossil fuels and proposes to increase the EU renewable energy target to 45% by 2030. Published as part of the plan, the EU Solar Strategy aims at deploying over 320 GW of solar photovoltaic (“solar PV”) by 2025, more than doubling compared to 2020, and almost 600 GW by 2030. With this ambition in mind, the Alliance aims at scaling up the PV manufacturing in the EU to 30GW across the whole supply chain, as committed to in the Joint Statement by the Alliance founding organisations. To do so, the Alliance has set up four Working Groups on financing of European PV manufacturing, demand for European solar products, supply chain bottlenecks and solutions for the skills gap. In these Working Groups members are conducting analyses and collaboratively work on possible support measures for solar PV manufacturing.

The Forum was split into two panel discussions, the first of which debated whether the EU is on track to reach its target of 30 GW capacity along the value chain by 2025. Main barriers and necessary support to create notable European PV manufacturing industry were shared by the representatives of companies from the different PV value chain segments. Reoccurring topics were the need to address high energy costs in the EU for the manufacturers to be competitive and the ask for support to bridge the funding gap compared to PV products from other world regions, notably China and US. In the second part of the day representatives of the four Working Groups presented their intermediary outcomes. An overview of the suggested measures can be found on the Alliance website.

Since the launch of the Alliance the Commission has put forward a number of actions that aim to reshore the solar PV manufacturing in the EU, notably the Green Deal Industrial Plan which aims at boosting the net-zero technology manufacturing of the EU through a simplified regulatory environment, accelerating access to funding, enhancing the development of the necessary skills and supporting trade. As part of this plan, the Net-Zero Industry Act provides a simplified regulatory framework for promoting investments and scale-up of the EU's manufacturing capacity of net-zero technologies required to meet the EU’s ambitious climate targets. For the set of strategic technologies – including solar PV – the benchmark has been set to meet 40% manufacturing capacity in relation to the EU’s annual deployment needs by 2030, across the full value chain.