The Solar Energy Industry Association (SEIA) has released a white paper that aims to build a stronger national solar power supply chain in the United States and reduce dependence on global imports, particularly from China.
SEIA said in a press release that the report, titled "Revitalizing U.S. Solar and Energy Storage Manufacturing:Transforming Management Away From China," outlines a plan to reduce imports, coupled with the transfer of key parts of the supply chain and efforts to expand corresponds to the domestic production scale.
Abigail Ross Hopper, President and CEO of SEIA, said: "The United States' control of the solar power supply chain is critical to our national security and economic strength. China will not willingly give up its market share. As such, we need to think strategically about how we Leverage the proposed specific Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) guidelines to build the clean energy manufacturing engine in the United States."
According to the document, the current political environment is sufficient to support all manufacturing elements of the solar power supply chain in the United States in the medium and long term. It was also noted that this independence does not mean that the United States will lose its connection to the global market, but that it will use this opportunity to reduce US dependence on China and other potential competitors in clean energy technologies and materials .
SEIA also released an interactive map to track new and existing solar and energy storage manufacturing facilities across the United States. The map includes investments in clean energy production since the adoption of the Inflation Reduction Act and historical investments in domestic manufacturing industries. This map includes facilities across the entire solar energy and energy storage value chain, including production facilities for raw materials such as polysilicon, solar cell and module manufacturing operations, and solar components such as support and tracking systems.
Users can filter the map by product type, facility size, location, job position, total investment, and output. The map includes the 42 GW of solar panel capacity announced so far by the United States, meaning SEIA has made significant progress towards the target range of 50 GW of domestic capacity by 2030.
According to SEIA analysis, IRA is expected to increase the number of solar manufacturing jobs in the United States from about 34,000 currently to more than 150,000 by the end of this decade. By 2030, nearly 20% of solar energy jobs will be in manufacturing, which currently stands at around 12.5%.
Hopper said: "Thanks to the IRA, the pattern of solar manufacturing has changed. The announced plan will create up to 80,000 high-quality jobs and support families. This is just the tip of the iceberg. With the rapid implementation of manufacturing-related tax breaks, more high-paying solar jobs will be created." be started one after the other."
