The demand for electric cars is growing worldwide. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), their share of the global car market will reach almost 20 percent by the end of this year. With the number of electric cars on the road increasing, it's essential to ensure that the charging infrastructure keeps pace.
What about carports in France and Germany?
European Union countries are ahead of the Czech Republic in promoting solar electricity generation in car parks. In France, a law enacted in mid-2023 mandates operators to install solar panels on car parking areas if the capacity of the car park is 80 parking spaces or more. According to the French government, the photovoltaic parking lots created could generate approximately nine to eleven gigawatts of energy, nearly as much as ten nuclear reactors.
In neighboring Germany, the obligation to install photovoltaics in open parking lots for commercial use has been enacted in the last two years in the states of Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Schleswig-Holstein, Rhineland-Palatinate, Lower Saxony, and Hesse, with the parameters of the individual regulations varying depending on the state concerned. The minimum number of parking spaces required ranges from 35 to 100.
While in Germany, this requirement applies only to new car parks, in France, the law extends to existing spaces. Interestingly, if this regulation also applied to existing parking lots in Germany, nearly a quarter of the 215 gigawatts of photovoltaic capacity the German government aims to install by 2030 could come from PV in parking lots, according to a study by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE).
