CARBON has announced a crowdfunding campaign to raise up to €2.5 million for its French GW solar factory
Funds will be used to build a 500 MW solar panel assembly plant as CARBON ONE
The Enerfip website will host the company’s crowdfunding call for 2 weeks starting from April 2, 2025
French solar PV manufacturing start-up CARBON is launching a new crowdfunding campaign on Enerfip to raise a minimum of €1 million ($1.1 million) and up to €2.5 million ($2.7 million) to fund its GW-scale solar PV factory in France’s Fos-sur-Mer.
With this crowdfunding, the French company plans to create CARBON ONE, a 500 MW assembly plant in the Aix-Marseille metropolitan area. It is planned to become operational from mid-2026 to produce 1 million solar PV panels/year.
TELI, a company created specifically to finance CARBON, will receive the €2.5 million bond financing via Enerfip to support the company. It has already invested more than €10 million in CARBON, with the lion’s share pooled in by its shareholder Libre Soleil.
The other investors in CARBON include independent operators and consulting firms, namely CVE Group, IEL, Irisolaris, Langa International, Provence Eco Energie, Sépale, Silversun, Synapsun, Technique Solaire, Tenergie, Terre et Lac, and Wewise. CARBON says it is open to more investors.
“By participating in this fundraising round, each investor is directly contributing to the industrial renaissance of photovoltaics in France by supporting the development of local, sovereign, and sustainable solar panel production,” stated the French manufacturer.
It added, “Through this crowdfunding campaign, Enerfip and TELI hope to involve citizens in their energy sovereignty and enable them to contribute to the competitiveness of French industry in terms of renewable energy production.”
The crowdfunding opens on April 2, 2025 and ends on April 20, 2025 on the Enerfip website.
CARBON had earlier announced plans to acquire EDF Group’s solar PV manufacturing arm Photowatt to use the latter’s Bourgoin-Jallieu location in France for a 500 MW module production site (see France’s Carbon To Acquire Solar PV Modules Manufacturer).
CARBON’s overarching ambition is to operate 3.5 GW annual solar module and 5 GW solar cell production capacity at Fos-sur-Mer with plans to bring it online by 2025-end and fully ramped up in 2026 (see France To Host Integrated Solar Gigafactory).