Energy Secretary Rick Perry followed President Trump’s decision to impose solar tariffs with the start of a $3 million competition to spur more innovative solar manufacturing in the United States.
“The American Made Solar Prize will galvanize our country’s entrepreneurs, allow them to utilize technologies and innovations developed through [the Energy Department’s] early stage research and development, and, ultimately, bring new American-made products to market,” Perry said Wednesday.
The Energy Department said Wednesday the $3 million prize will combine with other agency funding of up to $400 million for solar projects.
The solar prize will help catalyze a new public-private “network” under the Energy Department to bring together universities, energy incubators, and the agency’s fleet of 17 national laboratories “to create a sweeping portfolio of innovations primed for private investment and commercial scale-up,” the agency said.
Trump said Tuesday that his imposition of tariffs will spur manufacturing of solar products in the U.S. by making it more cost-competitive than relying on imports.
“Our action today helps to create jobs in America for Americans,” Trump said. The tariff provides a “strong incentive” to build major manufacturing plants to build solar panels, he said.
The administration appears to recognize the massive investment in solar development, although a big chunk of the solar industry didn’t agree with Trump’s decision to impose tariffs.
The tariffs on imported solar panels and solar cells, to be levied over four years, are for 30 percent in the first year, 25 percent in the second, 20 percent in the third, and 15 percent in the fourth year.
The first 2.5 gigawatts of imported solar cells will be exempt from the tariffs.
The tariffs will increase the cost of building new solar power plants by utilities as well as residential rooftop devices for households, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association and others who oppose the decision. They also project the loss of 23,000 jobs because of the tariffs in the first year.
Big coal utilities don’t like the tariffs. “We are planning a significant number of projects across our commercial and regulated businesses,” said Duke Energy, one of the nation’s largest power utilities that is transitioning from coal to more renewables. “The imposition of this tariff will increase customer costs and hurt our ability to deliver on that promise.”
But the large credit rating agency Moody’s believes the impact will be limited. “While tariffs may delay investments in solar generation at first, we think the long-term impact will be limited since the tariffs expire in four years and the recent pricing of solar energy for 2023 reached record lows,” Moody’s said after Trump’s proclamation.
