Hanne Sjøvold Hansen (HVL) - Jobs in the solar energy business in Germany and Norway

Hanne Sjøvold Hansen from HVL held an Energy Lab lunch seminar on the 7th of March on creation of jobs in the solar cell industry. The work was based on a master thesis at HVL in 2016 and is now submitted for publication. See her presentation here.

The study focussed on the Norway with comparison to Germany and covering the upstream part of the value chain dealing with materials and equipment, and excluded application, installation etc (the downstream part) which anyway has been rather small in Norway until now.

The period 2001-2015 can be divided into three phases; a rise until 2010, then rather dramatic decrease in 2011 and a gradual growth again since then. In Germany the decrease was not as rapid. On the other hand the growth in Norway since 2011 has not been seen in Germany. Insentive-aided Chinese producers (and not the financial crisis) was the main reason for the drop in 2011 while prior R&D knowledge, community spirit and varying degrees of diversification were among several factors explaining other aspects of the patterns. Also the downstream parts of the industry may become more important.