Industry leaders convene in Düsseldorf, emphasizing collaboration over confrontation to tackle terawatt-scale energy transition challenges.

Düsseldorf, Germany – December 2025

Chinese and European leaders in solar and energy storage industries finished a high-level conversation this week, echoing the call for stronger collaboration between their countries as they deal with complex global trade issues. The China-EU Solar & Energy Storage Industries Dialogue 2025, which took place in Düsseldorf, provided the opportunity to sync up on shared strategic interests and develop a dedicated bilateral cooperation platform to create business-to-business connections.

The EUPD Group and the China Photovoltaic Industry Association (CPIA) organized this forum to emphasize the growing recognition of how these two regions are dependent on each other. The manufacturing capabilities of China for solar panels and battery cells are aligned with the needs of Europe to decarbonize, while Europe brings significant expertise to the table with respect to system integration, project financing and creating market mechanisms.

“We need collaboration,” said Ru Jialin, deputy director of international affairs at the CPIA, in an opening address. “You can see in the past decades, in this industry good cooperation built good companies both in Europe and in China.” This sentiment was echoed by European counterparts, who framed the partnership as essential for navigating diverse market dynamics and supply-demand balances.

From Terawatt Ambitions to Market Realities

The dialogue was set against the backdrop of staggering growth on both sides. The Terawatt Era in China has commenced, with 1,126 GW of accumulated PV installations and the development of nearly 100 GW of new type of energy storage. The Installed capacity of Wind and Solar in the country increased from 530 million kW in the year 2020 to 1.68 billion kW by the end of July 2025.

Similar developments are occurring throughout Europe with the REPowerEU Plan and the Clean Industrial Deal which will deliver a total of 100 GW of new renewable energy capacity every year over the next three years, and are experiencing rapid growth. This rapid growth presents significant technical and financial challenges for market prices and grid integration – therefore, providing storage solutions to both enhance market prices and protect from volatility will become an essential component of ensuring reliability and security of providing energy generation and delivery in Europe.

Daniel Fuchs, Chief Customer Officer at EUPD Group, underscored this shift: “Our industry is shifting towards a supply strictly dominated by Chinese manufacturers… With the event, we want to connect the dots between Europe and China.”

Launch of a Bridge: The Bilateral Cooperation Platform

The most concrete outcome of the dialogue was the introduction of a new bilateral storage cooperation platform. This initiative is designed to provide comprehensive support for cross-border operations, including warehousing, logistics, recycling, and technical services. It directly addresses the practical hurdles faced by Chinese companies operating in Europe and European players seeking opportunities in China’s vast market.

This platform arrives at a critical juncture. While the EU’s Net-Zero Industry Act introduces local content requirements for clean tech auctions, Chinese firms are already advancing a localized European footprint. Companies like CATL are building giga-scale battery factories in Germany and Hungary, with a total planned capacity nearing 400 GWh across the continent. Similarly, Chinese inverter and system integrator Sungrow Power recently secured a major 2.4 GWh energy storage order in Europe.

The new platform aims to facilitate such investments and partnerships, moving beyond trade to establish intertwined supply chains.

Storage: The Central Pillar of Future Growth

A key consensus at the forum was the central role of energy storage in enabling the next phase of the energy transition. Analysts presented robust forecasts for Europe’s storage market, with Germany’s capacity projected to hit 29 GWh by 2029, followed by the UK (16 GWh) and Italy (12 GWh). Storage is increasingly becoming the primary economic driver for new rooftop solar installations.

Sonia Dunlop, CEO of the Global Solar Council, warned that markets like California and Spain are already experiencing negative electricity prices during peak renewable generation periods—a situation she attributed to insufficient storage deployment. She urged governments to open flexibility markets to batteries, a move critical to meeting global renewable targets.

Navigating a “Cooperative Competition”

Underlining tensions were present in many of the discussions as well. One example of the EU’s attempt to exploit Clean Technology for its own purposes, through its Clean Industrial Deal, is that it is attempting to accelerate the establishment of domestically manufactured components in Europe to 40% by 2030; this constitutes “cooperative competition” to the many participants within this forum.

On the other hand, the discussions were fundamentally based upon a framework of mutual pragmatic synergy between China and the EU. The sheer volume of production coming from China continues to provide a significant downward pressure on overall technology costs globally. However, due to new EU carbon reduction regulations and business practices, Europe is generating an enormous volume of structured demand for clean technologies. Furthermore, this synergy is being demonstrated at the political level as well, with both sides publicly committing to working together in the area of climate change and the development of green technologies during the China-EU Leaders’ Meeting in July 2025.

The Path Forward

The Dialogue of 2025 has established an example of how working together, companies in industries can work together, instead of fighting each other. It has created a real way for companies to cooperate, and areas like integrating electrical grids and Storage cost have been highlighted as common areas for cooperation, changing the discussion from one of simply fighting each other as competitors to one of eventually becoming partners.

As we continue to work towards being able to put terawatts (1000 megawatts) of renewable energy sources into the global marketplace, having these types of “bridges” established between some of the most significant renewable energy manufacturers in the world with one of the markets with some of the most ambitious Renewable Energy (RE) goals will be essential for connecting these companies and their customers globally, where we’ll succeed in being able to achieve or meet the goals outlined in our Climate Change (CC) frameworks. The success of any relationship that follows will ultimately depend on how both companies are able to supply both secure energy sources and provide energy that meets their respective needs, both as a manufacturer and as a consumer throughout the world.