“We’re either going to be laying off hundreds of employees or hiring hundreds of employees.”
Those are the only two avenues, said Troy Ochoa, VP of solar construction for Wanzek Construction, during a press conference today about a coming decision from the Dept. of Commerce on antidumping and countervailing (AD/CV) duties on solar panels imported from Southeast Asia. The department is considering 50 to 250% tariffs on imported solar panels from Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, effective as soon as this Thursday, Sept. 30. With 80% of U.S. crystalline silicon solar module imports in the first half of 2021 coming from those three countries, many large-scale solar installers and developers have stated that this week’s Commerce decision is a drastic fork in the road for the U.S. solar industry and its thousands of jobs.
In August, a group of anonymous U.S. solar manufacturers — calling themselves the American Solar Manufacturers Against Chinese Circumvention (A-SMACC) — filed a petition with the Dept. of Commerce asking for an investigation into Chinese silicon solar panel manufacturing companies working in Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam as a way to avoid AD/CV duties.
Credit: American Energy
Solar advocacy group SEIA held a press conference today to discuss the potentially devastating effects to the U.S. solar industry if the Dept. of Commerce allows for additional tariffs on panel imports from the three countries.
AD/CV duties have been in place against Chinese solar manufacturers since 2012. Any silicon solar imports from China come with an extra tax from the Dept. of Commerce. Some Chinese companies, in a possible attempt to avoid paying the tax (according to the petition), have moved portions of their manufacturing capacity to other Southeast Asian countries.
A-SMACC is asking the Dept. of Commerce for a deeper look into specific Chinese companies working in the three mentioned countries:
- Malaysia: JinkoSolar, LONGi (and affiliates), JA Solar
- Thailand: Canadian Solar, Trina Solar, Talesun Solar, Astroenergy
- Vietnam: Trina Solar, Canadian Solar, Sunergy, Boviet Solar, GCL, LONGi (and affiliates), JinkoSolar
The petitioners want additional tariffs ranging from 50 to 250% on imports from the above companies, effective immediately. According to SEIA, a new investigation into the AD/CV duties would immediately disrupt the U.S. supply of solar modules, as the three countries accounted for 59% of the country’s total supply of crystalline silicon solar module imports.
With no domestic silicon solar cell manufacturers, and domestic module manufacturing capacity at less than 8 GW, the United States is dependent on solar module imports to meet demand. The country is expected to install 30 GW of solar in 2022 and 32 GW in 2023. Without supply from Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, SEIA is predicting installs to fall to less than 26 GW in 2022 and 18 GW in 2023 — or a loss of 18 GW over the next two years.
One reason behind A-SMACC’s petition is that further tariffs would boost domestic manufacturing, but with the time and financial investments needed to start domestic cell production and grow module assembly capacity, installation numbers will suffer. And any drop in expected solar installations would put the country further behind in meeting the Biden Administration’s goal of 80% clean energy by 2030.
“Growing the U.S. solar supply chain is of critical importance,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of SEIA. “Long-term policy that drives solar demand and incentivizes a healthy manufacturing sector can drive a strong U.S. manufacturing renaissance. However, needless and harmful tariffs are not the solution.”
Imported solar panels are already being affected, with SEIA reporting that companies are being forced to use existing module inventory to make up for import shortfalls, which has raised the costs of projects by 4 to 20%. Some EPCs are already noticing module shortfalls.
George Hershman, president of Swinerton Renewable Energy, participated in today’s press conference. The country’s largest large-scale solar EPC employs about 3,000 employees nationwide and Hershman said all of those jobs are currently at risk.
“Module deliveries to the U.S. have frozen. This isn’t something in the future. Just the submitting of this petition has essentially frozen the market,” he said. “We can’t get module manufacturers today to sign purchase orders that we need to deliver projects in the near-term because of the concern of whether there will be a 50 to 250% tariff when those modules hit the port. Nobody can take that cost risk, so it’s essentially stopping projects going forward.”
Hershman stated that Swinerton is on contract for 4.5 GW of solar installations in 2022 and these tariffs have put “almost 100% of that work” at risk. “To say that this is a small issue or a nuanced issue is clearly an understatement. This has significant risk to our business and those thousands of employees. This is about whether or not we hire 3,000 or 4,000 employees to deploy the projects we have under contract or we start laying off employees in 30 days,” he said.
Ochoa stated that a current Wanzek project in Texas has already been delayed due to module companies preventing product shipments because of the effect of tariffs that could drop this week.
“[At the Texas project], two weeks ago, it was announced that modules are being five months delayed,” he said. “That’s hundreds of jobs. Those jobs have now been delayed for five months, and the potential for longer. When you kill projects, you kill jobs.”
Last week, 200 American solar companies sent a letter to Commerce Sec. Gina Raimondo outlining the impact these duties could have on the livelihoods of 231,000 U.S. solar workers and on the nation’s efforts to fight climate change. The signatories include manufacturers, developers, installers, financiers and service providers from across the solar supply chain. SEIA is asking the Dept. of Commerce to dismiss the petition.
The industry is expecting a decision from Commerce as early as Sept. 30.
Placing this type of tariff on Panels coming into the US would place an interesting scenario on that which we are attempting to do, that is, creating a market with our contacts in South America.
“Last week, 200 American solar companies sent a letter to Commerce Sec. Gina Raimondo outlining the impact these duties could have on the livelihoods of 231,000 U.S. solar workers and on the nation’s efforts to fight climate change. The signatories include manufacturers, developers, installers, financiers and service providers from across the solar supply chain. SEIA is asking the Dept. of Commerce to dismiss the petition.”
This tariff protectionism is fresh right now and it has proven to be restrictive to the application of solar PV installations in large construction projects like utility scale, medium scale like C&I installations and in the residential solar PV installation market. As before when one “protects” manufacturing interests in the U.S. with tariffs AND it fails like last time, you lose maybe 5,000 mostly automated solar PV plant employees. Due to the price increase of solar PV panels and ancillaries and BOM, one constricts construction of solar PV projects and can idle 200,000 installers and ancillary workforce personnel. So, is it a “good idea” to place a tariff on foreign solar PV panels and save “maybe” 5,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs, but, increase costs and layoff 200,000 installers? That 40 to 1 ratio doesn’t make sense from an employment perspective, nor a tax base perspective.
Having capacity to produce solar panels went the same way as our semiconductor manufacturing capabilities. We are all experiencing the impact of this ill fated long term sourcing decision for extremely strategic components. Automotive manufacturers gave up their fabrication capacity on the Covid demand concerns. Now a $10 chip is shutting down car manufacturing plants. So much for their strategic sourcing capabilities. Now the capacity resides almost exclusively in Asia. The solar industry has taken a very similar path.
Now the consumers are the victims. The path forward needs to be our are aggressive purchasing of their ‘below cost of production??’ solar panels at a substantial discount. At the same time the federal government needs to provide incentives for solar and semiconductor fabrication to return to the US. Let’s all not be stupid while we work through this global sourcing f##kup that was many years in the making. Let’s leverage all channels that are beneficial to the consumer. Solar is not going away and multiple replacement cycles are ahead. The US can and is the technology inovater and this is where we can win the long term strategic game.
Let’s get back to the job at hand and aggressively implement solar and wind energy strategies that are smart yet keeping our eye on the long-term plan.
Listen to Roberta. She knows what she is talking about!
The problem per se doesn’t seem to be the price of Chinese or Malaysian solar PV panels, but actual tax laws on the books that actually rewards Corporations to off shore manufacturing to ‘other’ countries. The so called “inverse tax” allows off shoring while giving the Corporate center still in the U.S. a tax write off which is what folks are complaining about when they say, “Billionaires pay less taxes than the middle class does.”
China’s cheap solar PV panels are just the tip of the iceberg, the supply chain of goods and services are coming from so many other countries that it has been pointed out by NERC, the spare parts for the national electric grid are for the most part sourced from other countries leaving the U.S. with an actual national security problem now and it is continuing on. The U.S. doesn’t have the manufacturing capacity for extremely large items like a nuclear plant output step up transformer, this has to be manufactured in Italy and shipped by boat to get the part to the U.S. about a one year process from start to finish. Accomplishing self reliance on one’s own solar PV and ESS moving towards energy self sufficiency and resilience is where one’s monies should be spent, don’t depend on the political/geopolitical dilatory response to social ills suffered now.
Sounds like some people are waking up. Hope they tax the crap out of them. Hope this would stop it from coming to America.
We need to shift to manufacturing with in the US.
Beautiful artical on facts.
Praying they add a 250% tariff to the panels to keep our state beautiful, clean, peaceful, and not toxic.