Carbon to Launch 5GW Photovoltaic Gigafactory in France

Solar sector company Carbon has declared that it plans to build a 5-GW solar panel factory in France by 2025. The industrial start-up has also said that it hopes to triple production capacity to 15 GW by the end of this decade.

As per the company, the Gigafactory project is expected to create more than 2,000 direct and 4,000 indirect employment opportunities. Carbon says that the factory will rely on efficient photovoltaic (PV) technologies such as TOPCon and IBC (Interdigitated back contact). The factory will also make low-carbon Europe-made polysilicon. High renewable energy share of grid in Europe means lowering carbon footprint of input materials like polysilicon, and down the line, even PV modules, is set to be used as a competitive diffrentiator, and in time perhaps, even a non-tariff barrier vis a vis Chinese or other imports to the continent.

Carbon will go for the first fundraising round of between €100 million and €200 million soon to launch production in 2023 or 2024.

Carbon said that it expects the installed solar capacity of entire Europe to rise by at least four times by the end of this decade. This implies that the demand for PV modules will rise to about 60 GW annually in 2025. The company said that the demand will further grow to 100 GW annually in 2030.

“Carbon is an ambitious but realistic project. Our originality lies in the integration of the entire value chain from silicon to modules. We aim at producing photovoltaic panels and components in Europe, which meet market expectations in terms of quality and competitiveness,” said Pierre Emmanuel Martin. He is co-founder of the start-up Pascal Richard and one of the founders of SMA France.

The installed solar capacity of France itself hovered around 13.3 GW by last September. It added more than 2 GW in the first three quarters of 2021. As per the projections by the industry, that country will witness a total installed capacity of 18 to 20 GW of solar projects by 2023.