{"id":49303,"date":"2025-04-25T11:59:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T11:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/49303\/"},"modified":"2025-04-25T11:59:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T11:59:09","slug":"austria-introduces-made-in-europe-bonus-for-eu-made-components","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/49303\/","title":{"rendered":"Austria introduces Made in Europe bonus for EU-made components"},"content":{"rendered":"

The news also follows Austria\u2019s launch of a similar \u201cMade in Europe\u201d bonus<\/a> to government subsidies offered to European solar component manufacturers last year. Last year\u2019s subsidy bonus was also up to 20% of the total value of the project, and between the two announcements, there is now considerable support for both the manufacturing and deployment of European-made solar components in Austria.<\/p>\n

\u201cA central element of this is the \u2018\u00a0Made in Europe\u2019\u00a0bonus,\u201d said Austrian minister of economic affairs and energy Wolfgang Hattmannsdorfer. \u201cIt represents regional added value and a clear commitment to Europe as an industrial location. This course is complemented by the strengthening of hydropower, the targeted expansion of electricity storage and photovoltaics.\u201d<\/p>\n

More specialised financing<\/p>\n

Hattmannsdorfer\u2019s comments come as Austria has outlined its government funding priorities for 2025, which include \u20ac60 million (US$68.1 million) for PV systems and storage, out of \u20ac70 million offered in total. The rest of the money will be split between hydropower plants of up to 2MW (set to receive \u20ac5 million), biomass plants of up to 50kW (set to receive \u20ac4 million) and wind turbines of up to 1MW (set to receive \u20ac1 million).<\/p>\n

However, these figures are notably lower than the same totals last year, which saw the government commit \u20ac150 million towards renewable energy. Last year, solar systems received \u20ac135 million in direct government support, meaning both total investment in renewable energy in general, and investment in solar in particular, has roughly halved since last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must use public funds more specifically and effectively,\u201d explained state secretary for energy Elisabeth Zehetner, as Austria\u2019s financing approach has shifted from large-scale capital to supporting specific elements of the supply chain, such as manufacturing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is why we are gradually aligning our funding policy more strongly with system service and efficiency \u2013 so that every subsidised kilowatt-hour also makes a real contribution to the energy transition.\u201d<\/p>\n

The government also announced a \u201cmajor development\u201d to come in the fourth quarter of this year, in the form of amendments made to the Electricity Investment Grant Ordinance 2025 (EAG), the legislation under which these government investments are to be made. From the fourth quarter onwards, only PV systems co-located with storage projects will be eligible for government subsidies, there will be no funding provided in times of negative prices and the government will have a \u201cstronger focus\u201d on hybrid power plants.<\/p>\n

Many of these mechanisms suggest that delivering reliable power, rather than simply building sheer volume of new capacity, is a priority for Austria, as it looks to invest in storage and hybrid projects that can be perceived as less variable forms of power generation than pure-play solar. Curtailment is a significant problem in Austria, with independent transmission system operator Austrian Power Grid reporting that the country curtailed 57.4GWh of electricity in 2024, and that in the first 29 days of 2025 alone, a further 4.8GWh of power was curtailed.<\/p>\n

This echoes similar concerns expressed across Europe; earlier this month, Jos\u00e9 Andr\u00e9s Visquert, global head of grid at renewables developer BayWa r.e., told PV Tech Premium<\/a> that in Europe, \u201cone of the biggest problems we see is that the speed of grid expansion is much slower than the expansion of renewables penetration.\u201d<\/p>\n

At this year\u2019s Intersolar Europe event, Solar Media will host a panel discussion on European manufacturing at 3:30pm on Wednesday 7 May in hall A2, booth 159. Speakers include Ga\u00ebtan Masson of the Becquerel Institute and Edd Crossland of Oxford PV. Interested attendees can register to attend the panel for free\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The news also follows Austria\u2019s launch of a similar \u201cMade in Europe\u201d bonus to government subsidies offered to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49304,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[7907,2000,299,5187,26681,26682,26683,5167,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-49303","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-austria","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-european","12":"tag-intersolar-europe","13":"tag-legislation","14":"tag-made-in-europe","15":"tag-manufacturing","16":"tag-policy"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}