The global solar industry has reached heights only dimly imaginable a decade ago, but has much progress to make before it is an integral part of the world’s energy system, according to the participants in Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s first Solar Leadership Forum.

The Forum brought together 50 senior solar industry decision-makers in Napa, California, as part of Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s series of exclusive gatherings for industry thought leaders in clean energy and the carbon markets. It assembled over 20 chief executives of solar companies from the US, Europe, United Arab Emirates, China, and Taiwan alongside utility leaders, international organization sector experts, and senior policymakers. The group debated the future for the solar industry – attempting to look 3-5 years out and further.

Key findings of the Solar Leadership Forum include:

• The industry still requires market support mechanisms, in the form of public policy and financial incentives, in order to maintain current growth rates. However, all of the participants agreed that excessively generous incentives are a thing of the past, and in fact are not desired by most in the market. Stability, not generosity, is paramount for solar industry support mechanisms.

• Technological innovation is essential to ensure further sector growth and energy market penetration, and it is also inevitable, as innovation is hard-wired into the solar industry’s core processes. Market participants are relentlessly pursuing improvements and refinements at the device, project, and system level, and will continue to do so in response to competition and declining levels of incentive.

• No single technology or business model has emerged to dominate the global market, nor is one likely to. The photovoltaic and solar thermal electricity generation markets will support many different technologies as their characteristics fit different applications, although some technologies will fare much better than others. A point repeatedly made was that static business approaches will not dominate dynamic markets.