The aim of the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET-Plan) is to transform the way energy is produced and used in the European Union and to foster the development of cutting-edge renewable energy technologies, in order to provide Europe with the technical solutions required to meet its 2020 and 2050 energy and climate goals.

Since the SET-Plan was launched, many activities have been undertaken to advance these goals and to bring Europe closer to its renewable energy targets and to increase public awareness of the benefits of low-carbon energy. The following is a list of actions taken to promote the widespread uptake of solar energy technology throughout the EU in support of SET-Plan objectives.

• Solar Days was launched in 2002 in Austria, Germany and Switzerland and later expanded to become an official annual European Solar Days event held throughout Europe, aimed at increasing public awareness of solar energy and encouraging more people in the European Union to use it. The 6th edition of the European Solar Days, held in 2013, has shown massive public support across Europe for solar energy, with more than half a million European citizens attending 6,000 events in 20 countries.

• The European Union finances the SOLFACE project in 2004, which aims to open up a high-flux solar facility to scientists from Europe and allow them to tackle some as yet unexplored areas of research. SOLFACE offered high-quality research in two of the seven FP6 priority thematic areas, namely: “Nano-technologies and nano-sciences, knowledge-based functional materials, new production process and devices” and “Sustainable development, global change and ecosystems”.

• The European Commission publishes Concentrating Solar Power: from Research to Implementation in 2007. This policy document outlines the Commission’s policy aims and objectives to encourage the increased uptake of CSP technologies across Europe.

• In July 2008, the heads of states and governments of the European and Mediterranean countries launched the Union for the Mediterranean to provide a new impetus for regional cooperation. A key goal of the Union is to create a more integrated Mediterranean energy market in order to cope with fast growing energy demand in Southern Mediterranean countries. The flagship project of the Union, which favours low-carbon and renewable energy sources and energy efficiency, is the Mediterranean Solar Plan.

• The European Council and the European Parliament adopt the Commission’s proposal for a European Energy Programme for Recovery (EEPR) in July 2009. This €4bn programme includes several electricity interconnection projects in Spain, Portugal and Italy that contribute to the development of the local renewable energy markets and facilitate the grid connection of renewable energy sources, particularly solar sources, in the region.

• In 2009 the first four EERA Joint Programmes (JPs) were prepared, after their approval by the EERA Executive Committee, and are launched at a SET-Plan event in Madrid in June 2010, one of these JPs is dedicated to the photovoltaic sector. The objective of the Joint Programme is to accelerate the development of photovoltaic solar energy to an energy technology that can be implemented at a very large scale through Joint Programming activities by key research institutes in Europe.

• In October 2009 the European Commission issued a Communication on Investing in the Development of Low-carbon Technologies, which grouped the technology objectives for concentrated solar power (CSP) into four categories: Reduction of generation, operation and maintenance costs; improvement of operational flexibility and energy dispatchability; improvement in the environmental and water-use footprint; and advanced concepts and designs.

• The Solar Europe Industry Initiative (SEII) was launched in 2010 as a joint initiative between the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) and the European Photovoltaic Technology Platform (EU PVTP), in collaboration with the EC and the Member States. The SEII Team gathers the relevant stakeholders involved in the development of PV, drawn from industry, EU institutions, research centres and Member States to draft detailed roadmaps of RD&D priorities on which public and private resources should focus. The first SEII Implementation Plan covered the period 2010-2012, and the second, which covers the period 2013-2015, has recently been launched.

• In May, 2010, the European Solar Thermal Electricity Association (ESTELA) issued an implementing plan for 2010-2012 for the Solar Thermal Electricity European Industrial Initiative (STE-EII) based on the four policy objectives identified in the EC Communication on Investing in the Development of Low-carbon Technologies, published in 2009.

• In September 2010, the EC launched a comprehensive technical assistance project "Paving the Way for the Mediterranean Solar Plan" as a support tool for the implementation of the Mediterranean Solar Plan. The Mediterranean Solar Plan aims to achieve two complementary goals: developing 20 GW of new renewable energy production capacities and achieving significant energy savings around the Mediterranean by 2020, thus addressing both supply and demand.

• The EERA Concentrated Solar Power JP is officially launched during the SET-Plan Conference in Warsaw in November, 2011. The main targets of the JP on CSP are: to perform a general review of the state of the art on Heat Transfer Fluids (HTFs) and Heat Storage Media (HSMs) to identify potential improvements, to develop tools to perform analysis, modelling and simulation of new solutions, and to realise small-scale test apparatuses under real solar irradiation conditions.

• In November 2011, the EC welcomed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Desertec Industry Initiative (Dii) and Medgrid. The MoU establishes closer cooperation between the two private industry initiatives, which are key to the promotion of a renewable energy partnership between the EU and countries in the Southern Mediterranean.

• In May 2012, the association of Mediterranean Transmission System Operators (TSO) was presented to the international community. Med-TSO is based on the EU's ENTSO-E model and aims at the long-term integration of the regional electricity market. Med-TSO will facilitate electricity systems integration by coordinating development plans and grid access in MED-TSO countries.

• In June 2012, the European Commission and the Secretariat of the Union for the Mediterranean jointly organized a Mediterranean Energy Forum and a meeting of the Joint Committee of Experts for the Mediterranean Solar Plan, which focused on regulatory aspects of the Plan and on electricity transmission infrastructure.

• The European Commission published its Energy Roadmap 2050 in 2012, in which it states that the EU needs to expand and diversify links between the European network and neighbouring countries with a particular focus on North Africa, with a view to harnessing the solar energy potential of the Sahara. This Roadmap also identified concentrated solar power as a renewable technology in need of increased investment.

• In an award decision issued on 18 December 2012, the European Commission awards funding to 23 renewable energy projects under the NER300 first call for proposals. These include four CSP projects: Helios Power in Cyprus, the Minos and Maximum projects - both in Greece, and Spain’s PTC50-Alvarado. These four projects were awarded a total of over €203 million in funding.

• In May, 2013, an ad hoc Union for the Mediterranean Senior Officials Meeting on Energy was held in Jordan to advance preparations of the Mediterranean Solar Plan and prepare for the upcoming Union for the Mediterranean’s Ministerial Meeting on Energy, set to take place in December 2013 in Brussels.

• The European Commission’s in-house science service, the Joint Research Centre (JRC), produces an annual PV status report highlighting developments on the PV market and their implications for the meeting of SET-Plan objectives. The PV Status Report 2012, which is the eleventh edition of the report, gives an overview of current activities concerning research, solar cell production and market implementation of photovoltaics internationally.

• The 28th European PV Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition (EU PVSEC) is set to take place in Paris on 30 September – 4 October, 2013, bringing together scientists, researchers and policy makers to discuss the current challenges facing the PV sector in Europe and globally.