It’s Tuesday, January 17, and a Korean renewable energy company plans to ramp up solar panel manufacturing in the U.S.
Hanwha Qcells, a solar company based in Seoul, announced Wednesday that it plans to spend $2.5 billion on a new solar panel manufacturing complex in a suburb of Atlanta, a move that could help quintuple Qcells’ production capacity to 60,000 panels per day.
The new facility in Cartersville, Georgia, is expected to produce solar panel components like silicon ingots, wafers, and cells, in addition to assembling the panels themselves. Qcells is also preparing to expand an existing facility in Dalton, Georgia, where annual production is slated to increase from 2 gigawatts to 5.1 gigawatts as soon as this year. Together, the two plants are expected to create as many as 2,500 jobs.
Qcells’ announcement is just one of several recent corporate commitments to expand renewable energy manufacturing in the United States — thanks in large part to the Inflation Reduction Act, the climate spending bill that President Joe Biden signed into law last year. The act authorized some $30 billion in tax credits to make it cheaper to manufacture solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and other clean-energy technologies.
“I think it’s fair to say that this deal is President Biden’s vision come to life,” John Podesta, a White House climate adviser, told reporters, referring to Qcells’ proposed expansion in Georgia. Such investments are seen as critical to reduce the U.S.’s reliance on clean-energy technology imports. Today, most of the country’s solar panels are made in Asia, and China alone controls about 80 percent of global solar manufacturing. Human rights advocates have raised concerns that Chinese solar supply chains rely on forced labor.
Other companies taking advantage of the Inflation Reduction Act include Arizona-based First Solar — which pledged $1.2 billion last year to expand domestic solar panel manufacturing — and Honda and LG Energy Solution, which plan to spend $4.4 billion on a new U.S. factory for electric vehicle batteries.
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