Europe has some of the world’s best solar researchers and strongest local markets. So why is so much of the PV manufacturing happening somewhere else?
Recorded at the recent EU PVSEC scientific conference and exhibition in Rotterdam, host Jonathan Gifford explores this question with Gaëtan Masson, CEO of the Becquerel Institute and co-chair of the European Solar Manufacturing Council. They examine Europe’s increasingly unusual position within the energy transition: a major solar market with very little manufacturing of its own. Meanwhile, India, the U.S. and China are building enormous production capacity – often drawing on European research outcomes.
So, can Europe leverage its solar knowhow to rebuild its industry? Masson argues that European-level industrial policy is required – particularly if manufacturers are going to attract the investment needed to scale.
Jonathan also speaks with 2026 Becquerel Prize winner Delfina Muñoz, Research Director of the Solar Energy Department at CEA at INES. Much of Muñoz’s research has focused on the interfaces between the different layers of a solar cell – because even well-designed solar products can generate weak results if the layers within the PV cell don’t function efficiently together. It’s an idea that is becoming even more important with technologies such as perovskite-silicon tandems, where efficiency, degradation, and stability factors can all hinge on what happens at those interfaces.
As a board member of the European Solar Manufacturing Council, Muñoz is also working at another kind of interface: between academia, industry, and policymakers. Closing the gaps between these groups could assist Europe in contributing to the development of the next generation of PV technology – and manufacturing it.
About The smarter E Podcast
The smarter E podcast is all about the current trends and developments in a renewable, decentralized and digital energy industry. Our host welcomes and interviews personalities who shape our industry and drive developments forward. A new episode is published bi-weekly on Thursdays.
Delfina Muñoz is senior researcher in solar energy department of CEA-Liten. She is in industrial engineer and holds a PhD in photovoltaics from Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña. In 2008, she joined CEA. She has appeared in more than 50 publications and delivered over 100 conference presentations. She is in the Board of the Chilean ATAMOSTEC project related to reliability of PV in desert areas, in the steering committee of the heterojunction and tandem PV workshops, topic organizer of WCPC, PVSEC and IEEE conferences and reviewer in several high impact journals. Since 2019, she is in the steering committee of the ETIP-PV.
Gaëtan Masson is an entrepreneur with a passion for solar PV and the energy transition: an engineer, he also has degrees in management, political science and environmental management. He is the founder and director of the Becquerel Institute since 2014. Previously, and after a decade in finance and IT, he began developing the Business Intelligence capabilities of SolarPower Europe (formerly EPIA). Since 2013, he has been coordinating Task 1, "Expertise and Awareness" of the International Energy Agency PV Program (IEA PVPS). He led the PV Industry Working Group of the European PV Technology and Innovation Platform (ETIP-PV) of which he was co-chair from 2014 to 2019, and which spawned the European Solar Manufacturing Council of which he is co-chair since its foundation in 2019. He participates in the scientific committee of the EU-PVSEC and WCPEC conferences.