French solar panel manufacturers Carbon and Holosolis have been granted “project of national interest” status by the French authorities for their solar panel factory projects.
“This is an important milestone for our development,” says Carbon Director Etienne Roche pv magazine.
The Green Industry Law of October 2023 created the concept of “projects of national interest,” allowing developers to benefit from exceptional procedures to accelerate their implementation.
These projects are appointed by decree. Once qualified, they fall under the government’s jurisdiction for building permits within an exceptional regime where the prefect directly issues the building permit. This allows developers to claim the exemption for the destruction of protected species, where applicable. In the event of a dispute, it will be necessary to contest the decision and not the exemption decision.
The aim of the status is to use the exemption regime to reduce the duration of administrative procedures from almost two years to less than one year.
“This is very good news in light of the project’s strategic planning, which foresees a start of work in mid-2025 and commissioning from the end of 2026,” said Roche.
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Carbon plans to start pilot production in autumn 2025 at its vertically integrated tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) and IBC solar module factory in Fos-sur-Mer, in southern France. The factory will operate a 500 MW pilot production line for TOPCon panels, initially producing modules with cells sourced from Europe or outside Europe.
Holosolis, a spin-off from EIT InnoEnergy, plans to build a module production facility in Hambach, near Sarreguemines, in northwestern France. This site was previously the site of an abandoned factory project of Norwegian solar panel manufacturer REC, which planned to build a 4 GW heterojunction panel factory there. The new factory will have a capacity of 5 GW and will be operational in 2027.
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