Catherine Pommier, the innovation director of Ad’Occ, the regional economic development agency in Occitanie, southern France, has revealed, at the EnerGaïa Forum, that the agency is planning to attract investors for the construction of a solar module factory.
The agency is targeting to start with an initial capacity of 2 GW and has already identified an area at the industrial area of Pyrénia, close to the Tarbes-Lourdes-Pyrénées airport in Tarbes, in the Hautes-Pyrénées département, as a location for the facility.
“We expect the factory will occupy an area of 60 hectares and will need a supply of 100,000m3 of water and 23 MWh of electricity,” Pommier specified. “We have also identified the presence of two solar glass suppliers in Spain, and six extruded aluminum manufacturers in Occitanie. The agency believes it may find investors within two years.”
Occitanie is one of France’s regions with the highest levels of installed PV capacity. It currently has 2.5 GW and is projected to reach 7 GW by 2030, and 15 GW by 2050. “These targets will require the setting up of an entire production ecosystem across the entire value chain,” Pommier concluded, without revealing further details.
Currently, there is another solar module gigafactory under development in France, that of Norwegian solar module manufacturer REC, which is planning to build its heterojunction PV module factory on the eastern part of the industrial area ZACEuropole II, in Hambach, near Sarreguemines, in the northwestern France region of Moselle.
