Our energy supply is changing dramatically and quickly, and in this transition, ecological necessity meets economic opportunity. The transition to renewable energy sources is necessary to evolve into sustainable economies and mitigate climate change. It also requires and creates vast opportunities for technological innovation and business creation – which this National Growth Fund proposal intends to grasp. Electricity from sunlight (photovoltaics, PV) will play a major role in the energy transition and is poised to grow worldwide to the ‘terawatt’ scale. In the Netherlands, the installed capacity is set to grow from 18 GW_p today to 100-250 GW_p in 2050. Hence, PV is a crucial ‘industry of the future’.

This Growth Fund proposal aims to create the necessary innovative PV technologies and industrial basis in the Netherlands to capture economic value of billions of euros for decades to come. In addition, this ‘local manufacturing’, using short lines from supply to markets, will generate multiple environmental benefits and reinforce strategic autonomy in our energy supply. On all these points, the proposal is fully aligned with the currently accelerating momentum towards new industrial public policies on EU level.