The European Solar Manufacturing Council (ESMC) happily announces that Jens Holm, former Swedish MP, joins the ESMC executive team as Sustainability Policy Director.
Jens Holm has 15 years’ experience as a full-time politician, with three years in the European Parliament and 12 years in the Swedish Parliament. Holm has worked with Swedish and international climate policies, renewable energy, sustainable transport, and plant-based diet topics.
Among other things, as a politician he has worked with dossiers such as EU ETS, the renewable energy directive (RED), EcoDesign, the REACH-regulation, the Swedish climate policy framework and Sweden´s first climate act (2018). Holm is also a well know lecturer when it comes to climate and sustainability issues and author of several books in Swedish. He holds a master’s degree in sociology from Uppsala university.
“I am thrilled and ready to work for a strengthened support to the sustainability aspects of the upstream part of the PV industry in Europe. Environmental policies have been central in my career, and it feels great to dedicate my efforts to the PV Industry, especially because of its strategic importance to the inescapable energy system transformation and for reaching the climate targets”
Since the PV manufacturing industry is a clean-tech industry, strategic for the energy transition in Europe, its sustainability dimension is very important. ESMC argues that it is of utmost importance that domestic PV manufacturing capacities are secured in a fast and sustainable manner in Europe and the only alternative for Europe is to create appropriate and competitive business conditions for the domestic PV manufacturing and leverage the competitive advantages of PV manufacturing in China.
One way of doing so is to create a regulatory landscape that impartially benefits the ecological advantages of European-made products. ESMC’s Members boast state of the art production at the lowest carbon footprint available on the market.
Jens Holm is foreseen to take responsibility for ESMC’s current work on EcoDesign and Energy Labelling as well as to take on topics such as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), all measures that promote low carbon manufacturing.
“Jens Holm is an excellent addition to the organization, and he will work closely with our Executive Director Žygimantas Vaičiūnas. This is a concentrated recruitment effort of ESMC to strengthen our policy team with assigned dedicated regulatory working topics, timely before the intensified work in the Steering Committee of the European Solar PV Industry Alliance (ESIA) and the ongoing discussions of a Net Zero Industry Act”
Additionally, ESMC is troubled by the reports about human rights abuses against the Uighur minority in the Xinjiang province and the relation with the solar industry in China. Forced labour is deplorable and any goods (including PV modules and components) which may have been produced with forced labour should be banned. ESMC previously expressed support to the European Bank for the Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to request higher supply chain transparency, to be able to carry out thorough due diligence processes, so that Chinese Photovoltaic (PV) modules, using polysilicon that is suspected to be produced by forced labour, no longer will be eligible for EBRD funding. This topic is of importance for ESMC, and will from now on be handled by Jens Holm.
For further comments, please contact ESMC Secretary General Johan Lindahl at lindahl@esmc.solar or contact ESMC Sustainability Policy Director
Jens Holm directly at holm@esmc.solar.
Johan Lindahl
ESMC Secretary General
For more information:
lindahl@esmc.solar
Jens Holm
ESMC Sustainability Policy Director
For more information:
holm@esmc.solar
+4670 825 0889