<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1655830229644,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"00000172-336d-d668-a372-3bef83ff0002","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1655830229644,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"00000172-336d-d668-a372-3bef83ff0002","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_55830089", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1035024"} }); ","_id":"00000181-872c-d66a-a7c3-c72d2c760000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedA group of energy companies says it is prepared to buy billions of dollars worth of U.S.-made solar panel components in hopes of bringing more of the solar supply chain home from Asia.
The “U.S. Solar Buyer Consortium,” made up of four of America’s top solar energy project developers, is looking to spend $6 billion on solar panels and is encouraging manufacturers in the United States to expand to satisfy its demand, according to an announcement from participant AES Corporation on Tuesday. The group is soliciting partners to help meet a demand of up to 7 gigawatts per year of solar modules beginning in 2024.
DAILY ON ENERGY: EUROPE PREPARED TO ‘BURN ANYTHING’ TO KEEP POWER THIS WINTER
AES President and CEO Andres Gluski said the companies came together “to do our part to help attract investments into U.S. solar manufacturing,” an industry whose current market share pales in comparison to that held by Chinese companies and their affiliates.
AES, which joined the consortium alongside Clearway Energy Group, Cypress Creek Renewables, and D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments, said it has a large backlog of U.S. solar projects that it’s looking to support with spending on U.S.-made products, including 3.4 GW of new projects scheduled to come through 2025 and more than 10 GW worth across the globe.
The announcement comes as solar manufacturers and developers battle it out over the fate of trade policy — and specifically tariffs on imports from Asia, the overwhelming top supplier of solar components for U.S. solar projects.
While both groups want to see a stronger U.S. solar manufacturing base, they disagree sharply about whether existing tariffs, as well as additional tariffs, on solar imports from Asia help achieve that.
President Joe Biden recently joined the fray in a new way, invoking emergency trade powers earlier this month to exempt solar imports from Southeast Asia from any new anti-dumping/countervailing duties for two years.
The tariff “bridge” Biden imposed functionally staves off any conclusion favoring tariffs that the Commerce Department might find as part of its active anticircumvention investigation into solar imports from Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam.
Biden’s move, which he made under significant lobbying pressure from solar developers and their trade associations, angered solar manufacturing interests, who accused him of intervening in the Commerce Department’s investigation and allowing Chinese companies to continue dumping solar products in the four targeted countries without consequence.
Whether China is dumping solar products is the question at the center of the Commerce Department’s investigation.
Solar developers strongly oppose the Commerce investigation and argue it’s hampering industry, on top of the supply constraints and labor problems facing all sorts of industries. They say solar tariffs have yet to yield a massive scaling up of solar manufacturing in the U.S. in the decade since they were first imposed.
AES was among a host of companies that implored the Commerce Department to decline to open the anticircumvention investigation, and Gluski called for “a realistic, long-term policy framework that supports onshoring more of our solar panel supply chain without unnecessarily disrupting the growth and success of our sector” in AES’s announcement on Tuesday.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Other solar project developers and industry groups have been using similar language, arguing that Congress needs to pass more incentives to encourage manufacturing to expand while insisting they need access to panel components from Asia to keep building projects.
Solar cell and module products from Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam account for some 80% of such imports to the U.S.
