‘We want to learn from you’: SEIA on working with European solar at Intersolar 2025

“The effort to decarbonise the world and create a solar and a clean energy economy requires us to all work together,” Hopper explained.

However, this was not just blue sky thinking, some vague commitment to working together for some abstract common good. Hopper noted that, considering the increasingly uncertain and even hostile policy landscape in the US, working with experts in other regions and learning from their expertise could be essential if the US solar industry is to navigate the second Trump presidency.

Learning from Europe

“We’re here because you do it really well, and we want to learn from you,” said Hopper, referring to Europe’s expertise in the solar sector. While much has been made of the potential for market contraction in Europe, with trade body SolarPower Europe expecting Europe’s solar capacity addition to grow by 10% in 2025, compared to 33% growth in 2024 and 87% growth in 2023, Europe remains a bigger industry than the US in terms of sheer installation figures.

According to Ember Climate, Europe added 66GW of new capacity in 2024, pushing its cumulative installed capacity to 338GW, compared to the 50GW of new capacity added in the US in 2024, according to SEIA, which pushed the US’ cumulative installed capacity to 236GW.

“It’s been really fun to walk around the floor and see all of the exhibits and technologies, and talk to people about the technologies, what it looks like and what they’re seeing in the market. We’re just learners,” said Hopper.

She highlighted that the mood at this year’s Intersolar event was largely positive and that the US can learn much from the European industry.

“I think there is an optimism [in Europe],” said Hopper, whose comments can be seen in the video below. “We wouldn’t be on the solar-coaster if we were not fundamentally optimistic people, but I think as an industry we’re incredibly entrepreneurial and adaptive.”

“Time and time again we’ve shown that we’ve navigated our way through challenges; there are challenges – there are some in my country, there are some here in Europe – but that’s why we’re here, to figure out how you’re doing it, how we’re doing it, what we can learn from you and how we can work better together.”

Hopper also described Germany, the host of the event, as one of the “bastions” of solar technology and manufacturing and said the German market had provided plenty of learning points for the US. These range from the negatives, such as Meyer Burger’s highly publicised slowdown of production at its German facilities and outright closure of other plants, to the positives, such as Germany’s most recent oversubscribed PV tender.

Indeed, many of these challenges are reflective of ones endured by the US solar industry, suggesting that Europe and the US could benefit from sharing solutions to these shared issues.

“Very recently, [regarding] what’s happened in Spain and Portugal and the blackouts there, we had a long conversation about that yesterday and talked about how we message that,” said Hopper. “We’ve had that happen to us in Texas; there was blackout in Texas a couple of years ago and renewables got blamed for that within the first 24 hours and, guess what, it wasn’t renewables that caused the blackout, but the damage had already been done.

“We have a lot of similar challenges in terms of pushback from communities and politicians, and so talking about how we build consensus for this clean energy transition has been very helpful.”

Navigating tariffs

Navigating these sorts of challenges is essential for the US solar industry because of the uncertainty created by the current administration; Hopper said that she had been asked frequently about her response to the US’ unclear policy priorities during her time in Europe and described the legislative landscape as one of tension between different policies.

“There are these two forces at play: the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that was passed in 2022 has caused billions of dollars of investment into manufacturing in the US and we now have tariffs in place that hamper some of the supply from getting in,” said Hopper, who also described the current US policy landscape as something of a “checkerboard”.

Hopper highlighted the confusion and inconsistency in US policy, where the programmes of the last two administrations have encouraged domestic manufacturing, but made importing the materials necessary for that manufacturing prohibitively expensive. “[It amounts to] punishing companies that have done exactly what the government asked them to do – come to the US, invest in our country, build manufacturing capacity – and then tariff the exact thing they need to build the product,” said Hopper.

“There’s a huge tension there, and there’s a huge tension generally with tariffs – it’s always been our position that there are lots of good ways to incentivise domestic manufacturing and tariffs have never proven to be particularly effective – we’re fairly clear that that isn’t our position as an industry,” added Hopper, whose comments can be viewed in full below.

“We can understand what different countries have [in terms of] products and supply chains, and then work together, perhaps, to find ways to bring that product in. The tariff process in the US often has exclusions or exemptions or ways that you can – for a specific product or a specific line of product – maybe have those tariffs waived. So understanding what those assets are and how they might be appropriated into a larger narrative is really important for us.”

While the most recent change to US-China trade policy saw tariffs cut by 115% for the next three months, the sheer speed of changes to the financial basis of the global solar supply chain – and the fact that tariffs remain as high as 30% on all Chinese goods imported to the US – means that the US solar sector remains in an uncomfortable place.

However, Hopper highlighted that much of this rhetoric stems from an anti-China sentiment in particular, rather than a broad isolationist desire from the government. While this will have a significant impact on the solar industry – a report from the IEA (International Energy Agency) PVPS (Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme) found that, in 2023, China accounted for 84% of global solar module manufacturing capacity, 98% of global wafer production and 90% of all other solar component manufacturing – this does not preclude the US from working with other markets and companies from other countries.

“Other countries have done some parts of the value chain really well, and we would welcome them to the US,” said Hopper, when asked about Meyer Burger’s decision to relocate manufacturing capacity to the US in particular.

“I anticipate there will be some restrictions on foreign ownership in terms of being eligible for the tax credits [if they] apply to ‘foreign entities of concern’, which, relevant to our industry, is China. I fully anticipate that there’ll be some limitations on Chinese companies and the percentage of ownership they can have to be eligible for tax credits; that would not affect countries like Germany and some of our other partners.”

A global industry

Despite the complexities of the US policy landscape at present, there is widespread agreement, from those across the sector and the political spectrum, that onshoring more manufacturing capacity would be of benefit. The fact that, by last year, the IRA had encouraged a near quadrupling of US solar manufacturing capacity, is a testament to the willingness and ability to realise this potential.

However, Hopper was pragmatic about what the future of the US manufacturing sector could look like, suggesting that US factories will, most likely, be a part of a supply chain that remains spread around the world, rather than suddenly dominating the supply of cells, modules and components.

“This is a global economy, and there will always be imports as a part of the supply chain,” Hopper said. “We have about 50GW of modules and about 2GW of cells. It’s certainly our goal to have a robust supply chain, not just for modules but … for the balance of system.

“We have a number of tracker manufacturing facilities that have relocated back to the US, a lot of racking facilities and inverter facilities, so it’s actually happening,” Hopper continued, highlighting that more US manufacturing capacity is not only a goal, but something that has already been realised. “It’s happening, and we need to make sure we have a healthy ecosystem and a healthy demand pull; it’s going to be really important to make sure that those investments stay profitable.

“We do put customers at the centre … and customers – homeowners, corporates, utilities, data centres and hyperscalers – want reliable, affordable, resilient and, usually, clean energy,” Hopper added, saying that this emphasis on delivering what customers want will ensure demand for solar products in the US, and therefore the financial fundamentals underpinning them, remain strong. Her comments in full are available in the video below.

“They’re usually fairly agnostic about what that package looks like; for some needs it might be a hybrid solution, for some it might be a wind project already in place, and then you add batteries or you add solar.

“We’ve seen a number of oil and gas companies in the US putting solar out in the field on the oil derricks because the sun is fuelling the drilling equipment, which is perhaps not what we imagined when we thought about going solar, but it’s what the customer needs.”

Hopper’s comments reflect a sentiment expressed throughout this year’s Intersolar event that the co-location of a number of renewable energy technologies presents, in many examples, the most compelling business case for renewable energy. In the finance sector, for instance, hybrid power purchase agreements (PPAs) have become a cornerstone of the investment space, as investors look for alternate technologies to help smooth out the production profile of solar power, which is obviously more productive in the day than at night.

“I 100% think it will be a variety of technologies working together,” said Hopper. “That is going to be what continues to drive the demand, that customer focus.”