Interview with Pia Alina Lange, Trina Solar
SolarPower Europe Workstreams are open to members of SolarPower Europe, and offer the opportunity to exchange, collaborate and shape the European solar industry's positions on key policy topics.
Product Sustainability is among the most important drivers for solar energy deployment. Governments, businesses, and individuals across the globe have found PV as an answer to their climate concerns and to the need to align our energy system to the Earth’s environmental boundaries. Solar is set to play a leading role in the achievement of the 2030 EU renewable targets and the commitment to carbon neutrality by 2050.
The goal of the Product Sustainability Workstream is to steer the political discourse related to PV sustainability at European level and shape policy frameworks on this area, while highlighting solar’s top sustainability performance to policymakers and the general public.
The Product Sustainability Workstream is an important platform for all actors along the solar value chain to identify, assess and shape EU product requirements pertaining to environmental sustainability. This includes relevant topics such as design for circularity, use of substances, safety, carbon footprint and many more. The work of the Product Sustainability Workstream has an impact on both the way solar products – from panels to inverters – are designed, produced, used and disposed of as well as on the overall sustainability profile of our industry.
Any company active in the design, production, use or end-of-life management of solar products should join the Product Sustainability Workstream with the objective to create a versatile technical knowledge hub feeding into EU product sustainability legislation and standardisation.
As the European Union brings forward more and more product-related legislation, from Ecodesign, to the Energy Label, to REACH, the Product Sustainability Workstream plays an important role in bundling technical knowledge relevant for designing future-proof legislative requirements, while at the same time identifying technological opportunities or red flags for product requirements that have the potential to either impede or accelerate the further development of solar – both in terms of deployment as well as of innovation.
