Global solar power – a European perspective

The story of the solar sector in Europe is to some degree bucking the trends that we are seeing in other parts of the globe such as Africa, particularly Latin America where solar is a low cost genuine alternative solution to fossil fuels. I think Europe’s experienced a boom in the solar sector the UK is a great example of that we have done plenty of solar projects there has been a genuine explosion of solar development probably over the last 3 maybe even 4 years.

Certainly things in Europe have slowed down subsidy cuts that started in Spain and Italy, Czech Republic have been seen in other jurisdictions and utility scale solar deployment has certainly ground to a halt. What we are seeing as a result of that is perhaps 3 specific trends, firstly a move to smaller residential rooftop style solar distribution we are seeing an increase in distributive power we are seeing corporates develop their own solar facilities with private wires, and we are also seeing European developers who have gained real expertise in developing these projects here in Europe looking further afield around the globe, looking at other jurisdictions where they can take their expertise, and develop these projects and to some degree that has what has driven the solar portal we have had a number of clients regularly contacting us asking if we have done business in various Latin American, African jurisdictions asking us how the regulatory regime works, how power is bought and sold and it struck us that actual what we need to do is capture all of the expertise around our network and put this into one centralised portal that our clients can access and utilise.

So I guess in some ways the slowdown in Europe was the driving force and the inspiration for the portal in the first place.