Program
Sustainable Solar Europe 2024

SolarPower Europe’s Sustainability Award 2024 recognises top sustainability performers in the sector for their work to maximise the positive impact of solar on communities, the climate and environment. The Award aims to highlight and share sustainability best practices within the sector – and ultimately take solar forward as the sustainable energy leader.  

The Sustainability Award is a competition that aims to give visibility to top sustainability performers for their use of solar energy to reduce their environmental footprint and increase sustainability.

Introducing the SSI Traceability Standard

After a year of hard work, a successful public consultation and a pilot the Solar Stewardship Initiative is now reaching a new milestone with the publication of the final Traceability Standard. This step is particularly significant as it marks the completion of the SSI certification programme and allows product claims by the end of 2025. Not only production sites can be certified with the ESG Standard but we also have the tools to trace and prove where solar products are made. All of this ahead of relevant EU legislation on supply chains (i.e. Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and the Forced Labour Ban Regulation). The session will also discuss next steps and targets for supply chain coverage and penetration for the following years.

Solar parks do not only produce renewable, clean energy, but they can also improve the environmental conditions of the land they stand on. In collaboration with The Nature Conservancy, SolarPower Europe has developed a Biodiversity Net Gains Policy paper, assessing how solar PV can contribute to the EU nature restoration goals. This session will discuss what role the EU decision-makers play in enhancing the scaling of nature-inclusive solar parks in Europe. It will assess the different biodiversity net gain schemes that exist and how these schemes can enhance the development of nature-inclusive solar PV.

In this session, key cross-sectoral actors will discuss what role agrisolar plays in providing environmental and economic benefits to the farmer. Linking to the launch of the agrisolar report, the session will concentrate on the discussions around different types of agrisolar economic models and how different types of farming systems can be applied to these business models.

The solar sector has made significant progress in decreasing its carbon footprint in the recent years. This session will discuss methods and strategies of lowering carbon footprint of PV modules and components and it will present best practices based on the newest Solar Sustainability report published by SolarPower Europe.

PV's crucial role in the energy transition demands vast energy and materials, making resource efficiency essential. A strong circularity strategy, encompassing reuse, repair, and material recovery from end-of-life systems, is vital for sustainability. Effectively recovering and valorising material from end-of-life PV is key to closing the circularity loop, with R&I having a central role to play to solve recycling challenges.

In this session, four EU-funded R&I projects will outline how they are tackling these challenges, focusing on the recovery of high purity silicon, recycling of polymers, and recovery of silver from end-of-life PV panels.

This session will discuss the setup of a market for PV reuse in Europe. From decommissioning, testing and preparation of modules for second life to a successful deployment of reused modules to a new site, there is a wide range of challenges and opportunities. Building up on lessons learned from the Sustainable Solar report and End-of-life guidelines, stakeholders from the public sector, industry and academia will discuss the current state of play and the way forward.

Most renewable installations will happen at the local level, making cities and local authorities the perfect candidates to accelerate the energy transition. But increased solar installations will need to go hand-in-hand with a reinforced participation of local communities to guarantee citizens’ empowerment and, ultimately, public support for the energy transition.

This session will explore how solar developers can engage with local citizens, and how collaborations between the public and the private sector are possible to facilitate energy communities and collective energy actions by reducing the operational burden for citizens while still guaranteeing sufficient local engagement.