U.S. solar companies, imperiled by price collapse, demand protection

Several of the biggest American solar manufacturing companies are demanding aggressive action against cheap imports, arguing in a petition filed Wednesday with the Commerce Department that firms in four Asian countries are illegally flooding the U.S. market with Chinese-subsidized panels.

Though the panels are not produced in China, the petitioners allege many are made in factories linked to Chinese-based companies that benefit from massive price supports.

The complaint comes amid a glut of solar panels on the global market that has driven prices down by 50 percent over the past year, with the International Energy Agency projecting prices will fall even further. Manufacturers are currently making two solar panels for every one that is getting installed, according to the IEA. The oversupply is imperiling a boom in U.S. manufacturing driven by President Biden’s signature climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act.

“We are seeking to enforce the rules, remedy the injury to our domestic solar industry and signal that the U.S. will not be a dumping ground for foreign solar products,” said Tim Brightbill, an attorney for the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee, the group of U.S. firms that filed the petition. The group includes such industry giants as Ohio-based First Solar and Qcells, which has used Inflation Reduction Act subsidies to invest in huge new manufacturing facilities in Georgia.

In an email to The Washington Post, Chinese Embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu said his country’s “leading edge in new energy is gained through strong performance and full-on market competition, not government subsidies.”

“China has been and will always be open to industrial cooperation,” the statement said. “We hope relevant countries will embrace fair competition and work with China to contribute to a world-class, market-oriented and law-based environment for trade and economic cooperation.”

But the petition is also renewing tensions in the American solar industry, as installers of panels and developers of large solar farms warn that placing restrictions on imports could hurt consumers and raise prices. If the petitioners succeed, companies that buy solar panels from businesses in any of the four nations cited could be subject to steep penalties, which federal trade officials could enforce retroactively.

The industry only recently emerged from a bruising battle over the enforcement of trade laws, after the administration found Chinese companies were illegally sidestepping them by producing panels in China but then finishing assembly in other countries to avoid tariffs.

After industry groups warned strict enforcement of those trade laws could cripple growth, the administration agreed to waive penalties for two years. Enforcement is set to begin again in June. Now, American manufacturers say Chinese companies have shifted their strategy, building plants in Cambodia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand with big subsidies from a Chinese government eager to maintain dominance over the global solar market. Those four countries accounted for 84 percent of the solar panels imported into the United States in the last quarter of 2023, according to the petitioners.

Their petition was immediately opposed by major clean energy groups in the United States that represent the full spectrum of companies in the industry, and not just manufacturers.

“Today’s filing creates market uncertainty in the U.S. solar industry and poses a potential threat to the build-out of a domestic solar supply chain,” said a statement from a coalition that includes the Solar Energy Industries Association and the American Clean Power Association.

“America’s clean energy industry is urging the Biden administration to consider alternative solutions to address the petitioners’ concerns so that we can uplift American manufacturers and maintain a thriving clean energy economy across the value chain.” The groups warn disruptions in the market could undermine the administration’s climate goals.

The backlog of solar panels stockpiled in U.S. warehouses is so large that it could fulfill a year and a half of demand, according to the IEA. The manufacturing firms that filed the petition say imports of panels into the United States last year exceeded installations by more than 25 gigawatts, or roughly the amount of power produced by 25 large nuclear plants.

The glut comes after billions of dollars in new U.S. tax incentives triggered a solar manufacturing boom in this country. The incentives were meant to muscle solar production away from China and back to the United States. They have led to the ground breaking of new plants and a resurgence in solar cell production, a key part of the industry that had been almost entirely ceded to China and other countries.

But the solar market has also been going through growing pains unrelated to geopolitics. Rooftop solar installations collapsed in California after the state passed new rules cutting the subsidies for homeowners who generate power with them. The change came amid worries that lower-income utility ratepayers who could not afford solar panels would shoulder too much of the cost of the rooftop installations.

At a Senate hearing last month, Mark Widmar, CEO of First Solar, one of the companies that signed onto the petition filed Wednesday, warned lawmakers that “the U.S. solar manufacturing industry remains in a precarious position, despite the passage of the IRA.”

“Market conditions show no sign of slowing imports to the U.S. unless there are policy and trade law enforcement changes,” he said. “The relentlessness of the Chinese subsidization and dumping strategy has caused a significant collapse in cell and module pricing and threatens the viability of many manufacturers who may never be able to get off the ground or have the ability to finance the start-up or growth of their operations.”

Earlier this year, a company called CubicPV, which had backing from Bill Gates, scrapped its plan to build a factory that would make solar wafers, a key component in the panels, citing rapidly sinking prices in the market.

The Commerce Department now must decide within 20 days whether to launch the trade investigation requested in the petition, according to U.S. trade rules. Should an investigation happen, it is a long process, according to the groups that filed the petition, likely to stretch into 2025 before there is full resolution. But the administration would be required to make a preliminary determination within the next couple of months on the issue of whether trade rules were likely to have been violated and American companies were harmed.

As the case moves through the process, tensions within the U.S. solar industry are certain to flare.

“This case is bad news for clean energy jobs and American solar manufacturing,” said a statement from Kevin G. Hostetler, CEO of Array Technologies, which provides solar farm developers and operators systems that track and maximize efficiency of their panels. “More duties will only cause uncertainty and unnecessary project delays, holding the U.S. back in meeting our clean energy deployment and manufacturing goals.”