The UK is poised to lose solar investment after developer criticizes lack of incentives

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The UK is set to lose a high-profile investment in solar after developer Oxford PV said it was the ‘least attractive’ market in which to locate its new factory and was most likely to be listed in New York or Hong Kong.

The photovoltaic company, which was spun off from the University of Oxford in 2010 and is based in the city, announced an efficiency record for commercially available solar cells on Wednesday.

But Chris Case, its chief technology officer, told the Financial Times that between continental Europe, the US and the UK, the latter was the “least attractive” location for the cell factory due to the lack of incentives.

“It seems to me that the rest of the world is betting its future on solar and the UK is not,” he said, adding that “Germany and the United States are very good candidates” for the production site.

The criticism was leveled when the Climate Change Committee, statutory advisers to the UK government, warned in a report released on Wednesday that the UK was in danger of losing new green industries by failing to develop the necessary workforce skills.

Oxford PV declined to give details of its finances. His latest accounts show that in 2021 he made a pre-tax loss of £21.5m and raised £50m via a third party loan. The new solar cell will be the first commercialized product.

Case said it plans to commit to a new funding round of hundreds of millions of pounds to produce its proprietary technology and is considering going public. But she said: “For us and for me personally the most attractive markets for listing are things like the Nasdaq and the Hong Kong markets, but not so much the UK.”

The government has been under increasing pressure since former ministers and industry to develop an industrial strategy that will help the UK compete in a global race to attract technologies crucial to the green transition.

Both the US and the EU have announced wide-ranging proposals to boost renewable energy and battery technology in a bid to catch up with China, whose huge subsidies have made it dominant in most supply chains. clean energy supply.

The current Oxford PV test factory is based near Berlin, a decision Case said was made because the UK was offering “zero incentive-wise,” while the German government had offered subsidies that represented about 20% of the required capital.

“It was quite disappointing to have a technology that was born and bred in the UK but marketed elsewhere,” Case said.

The CCC, meanwhile, highlighted the intense competition for green investment from Europe and the US, adding that Britain would lose market share unless it supports ‘skills that attract UK investment’.

The UK needs to “defend its competitive edge” in areas such as hydrogen and carbon capture, he added.

The CCC said up to 725,000 net jobs could be created in areas such as electric vehicles and renewable energy generation, but warned that such growth “is not guaranteed” and would require “active redevelopment” and support from the government.

The commercial department did not respond to requests for comment.

The technology developed by Oxford PV, which has been independently verified by the German research institute Fraunhofer ISE, sets a record efficiency of 28.6% converting sunlight to energy, an improvement of about 5 percentage points compared to typical silicon cells. It was made possible through developments in the use of perovskite, a mineral derived from calcium titanate.

A record of 33.2% for the most efficient perovskite-silicon cell was achieved by scientists in April, but only for a laboratory model.

Oxford PV said solar panels using its cells should go on sale early next year.

The company is partly owned by Swiss solar developer Meyer Burger and Chinese renewable energy company Goldwind. Case said neither had access to Oxford PV’s technology.