The solar industry warns that EU rules would hinder the transition to clean energy

European solar companies say restrictions on Chinese imports included in the EU's proposed net zero industry law could make the transition to net zero more difficult, the FT reports. The law obliges the authorities to consider reducing the value of tenders for renewable energy projects if the companies come from a single country that has more than 65 % of the EU market share of the product. [The rule has been interpreted as "anti-China", as the country currently supplies almost all of Europe's solar PV module imports.] Dries Acke, director of policy at industry lobby group SolarPower Europe, told the FT: "If we don't want to risk a slowdown in deployment solar power, we need a bigger carrot, especially when it comes to financing solar power plants in Europe." Bloomberg also reports on the reaction to the Net Zero Industry bill, noting that "critics have called the approach more reminiscent of a planned economy than a free market response ". David Fickling's opinion piece for Bloomberg describes it as "green protectionism [that] will worsen its energy security". DownToEarth India reports that the outcome for the Global South is still uncertain. Politico reports that France is still pushing for all nuclear technologies to be on the list of technologies subject to special conditions set out in the Net Zero Industry law, despite losing the battle for that option before the proposal was made public. (See Carbon Brief's full explanatory article on the Net Zero Industry Act and how it relates to the EU's Green Deal industrial plan). Elsewhere, Reuters reports that the EU is working on a system to encourage companies to buy gas together.

Yuan Yang, Alice Hancock and Laura Pitel, Financial Times, Carbon Brief