Shortening the Innovation Cycle: Making EU and National PV Funding Work Together

The session opened with a welcome by ETIP PV Chair Rutger Schlatmann. Thomas Garabetian (SolarPower Europe) followed with a presentation of the results of an onsite survey to gather views from the PV community on how EU and national funding programmes can better support innovation across the value chain. 

ETIP PV would like to sincerely thank all participants who took the time to contribute to the survey and share their perspectives. Their input provided valuable insights and helped shape the discussion throughout the session.

The survey revealed broad agreement that today's funding landscape is only weakly aligned with technology needs along the innovation chain. Participants indicated that the main challenges are not necessarily related to the overall volume of funding. Instead, slow application and evaluation processes, as well as difficulties in ensuring continuity between funding stages, were identified as key barriers preventing innovations from reaching the market more quickly. Download the presentation PDF

The event also featured keynote presentations covering different perspectives on PV funding and innovation support:

IWG PV: Member State perspective and new IWG vision by Otto Bernsen (IWG PV, Netherlands);
From EU analysis to national funding and PV innovation by Ana Gracia Amillo (CENER).

Reflecting on the discussion, David Moser, Vice-Chair of the ETIP PV Steering Committee, noted:

"Building flexibility into the instruments, and giving good results a fast route into national funding, would be very beneficial for shortening the innovation cycle."

The discussion converged on a set of practical conclusions. Research ideas need to be able to adapt to the funding frameworks they encounter. Flexibility should be built into both project proposals and funding instruments rather than requiring case-by-case adjustments. Participants also highlighted the need for faster pathways that enable key exploitable results from European projects to access national funding schemes. In addition, funding instruments tailored to small, agile consortia that can be assembled quickly were identified as an important element for accelerating innovation uptake.

The discussion also closely aligns with ETIP PV's recently published statement, "Industrial Accelerator Act: formal shortcomings". In the statement, ETIP PV highlights the importance of creating a stronger framework to support the scale-up of innovative photovoltaic technologies, strengthen European manufacturing, and enhance industrial competitiveness. Among the identified challenges are the definition of a "Made in EU" system, the criteria used to determine its composition, the inclusion of products from Free Trade Agreement countries, and the proposed implementation timeline. Download the statement here

The conclusions of the parallel event reinforced the need for more coherent and better-connected European and national funding landscapes. Improving alignment between funding instruments, creating faster transition pathways between innovation stages, and supporting flexible project structures will be essential to shorten innovation cycles and strengthen Europe's photovoltaic innovation ecosystem.