Renewable

March 3 (Renewables Now) - Industrial start-up Carbon has announced plans to build a 5-GW solar panel factory in France by 2025 and then triple its production capacity to 15 GW by the end of the decade.

The company said in a statement that it intends to undertake its first fundraising round by the end of the year to pursue the inauguration of its first French production site in 2025. It did not mention how much it aims to raise.

The Gigafactory project is estimated to create 2,000 direct and 4,000 indirect jobs. The factory will rely on proven photovoltaic (PV) technologies such as TOPCon and IBC as well as low-carbon, Europe-made polysilicon.

"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,” stated Pierre-Emmanuel Martin, who co-founded the start-up alongside Pascal Richard, one of the founders of SMA France.

Carbon said, quoting third-party forecasts, that it expects Europe’s installed solar capacity to quadruple by 2030 and thus increase demand for PV modules to about 60 GW per year in 2025 and 100 GW annually in 2030.

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