The project covered six European countries (incl. Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Austria, Spain) and Turkey. Private investors and decision makers in banks and insurance companies were introduced to the new business models, allowing them to include these results in their decision process as regards new investments. The project also assessed what political framework for the application of new financing models is required and which barriers slow the PV expansion.

Launched in 2013, IRENA’s Global Atlas for Renewable Energy is an initiative aimed at facilitating access to data, analysis, and tools for assessing renewable energy resource potentials. The Global Atlas for Renewable Energy is a web platform that allows its users to find maps of renewable energy resources for locations across the world. Users can access maps via an online platform that presents data graphically in a map-based format. The Global Atlas contains maps for solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and marine energy. The online platform also includes a number of integrated tools that allow users to, for example, generate wind statistics, estimate the electrical output of a proposed solar PV project, or view solar time series data.

This technical report by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) provides information abou the Future costs of low carbon energy technologies, including also photovoltaics and solar tehrmal electricity technologies. The report presents internally consistent trajectories of capital investment costs to 2050 for selected low carbon energy technologies. In order to do so, it combines global scenario projections of technology deployment with the one-factor learning rate method. Global scenarios are used to identify a range, based on potential deployment, in line with baseline assumptions and two long-term decarbonisation pathways. A sensitivity analysis is performed based on different learning rates and results are compared with literature. It is found that, depending on the technology, a 15 % to 55 % reduction in capital investment costs of offshore wind turbines, photovoltaics, solar thermal electricity and ocean energy may be achieved by 2030 compared to 2015.

The project aims at demonstrating and introducing into the market key enabling technologies to improve predictability and flexibility of a Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plant with molten salt energy storage. These technologies are the design and operation of molten salt once-through steam generator, allowing fully flexible plant operation and an integrated weather forecast and dispatch optimization, allowing fully predictable energy dispatch. CSP will undergo large growth in developing markets, where grid constraints and market liberalization will play a role. Developing these key-enabling technologies will put European industries in the position to compete at the forefront in the market worldwide.