Solar manufacturing may expand further in Georgia, southeast under Build Back Better bill

11/15/21: Solar manufacturing may expand further in Georgia, southeast under Build Back Better bill

Augusta Chronicle, Nov. 15, 2021
Abraham Kenmore

Hanwha Q Cell, a solar module manufacturing plant, opened its doors in Dalton, Georgia, in December 2018. By spring of the next year, they had hired 500 workers to produce 1,700 megawatts worth of panels annually – 37 percent of the total production created by US solar panel assembly plants.

The solar sector in Georgia is ninth in the country, with 4,466 jobs, 57 manufacturing companies and 75 installers, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. But it is growing, and Sen. Jon Ossoff has negotiated the inclusion of a new bill incentivizing domestic solar manufacturing in the Build Back Better bill that he hopes will expand it even further.

"Frankly it would be a landmark bill," said Scott Moskowitz, director of market intelligence and public affairs for Hanwha Q CELLS North America. "It would be unlike anything we've ever had in the solar industry, and it would directly enable significant investment by companies like Q Cell across this whole solar industry manufacturing supply chain. We'd certainly hope to increase the size and scope of our investment in Georgia, but we also anticipate that others would do so as well, both in the state and across the country."

The legislation – Solar Energy Manufacturing for America Act – is structured to provide incentives for all four major steps in the supply chain of a solar panel. It creates tax credits for purifying silicone, creating wafers from that silicone, turning those wafers into the energy-producing cells, and assembling those cells into a solar panel module, ready for installation.

"In the US we have significant capacity to make polysilicon, the first step of that supply chain, and we now have quite a significant volume of solar module manufacturing," Moskowitz said.

"There is absolutely zero wafer and cell manufacturing in the United States. We do not yet have that."

If the module is assembled from domestically produced cells, the tax credit of 11 cents per watt should, according to Ossoff's office, cover about a third of the 33 cent-per-watt cost. There are lower incentives for imported cells. The bill does not have a Congressional Budget Office score yet - an independent score to weight the costs and benefits of proposed legislation.

Jobs outlook

Ossoff's office says the bill, if passed, will create tens of thousands of jobs and help meet President Joe Biden's goal of producing 40% of the USA's electricity from solar within 15 years, although they do not have an estimate of how many jobs it would create in Georgia, specifically.

"We're at this inflection point where solar is the cheapest form of energy in history, but the United States solar industry is heavily, heavily dependent on imports," Moskowitz said. "So this bill really seeks to change that dynamic."

Bryan Jacobs, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy solar director and state liaison for Georgia, said he saw this as a way to encourage domestic production without putting tariffs on foreign components.

"We absolutely need to bring more of this manufacturing back home, in-source it as opposed to outsource it," said Jacobs, pointing to supply chain disruptions and human rights concerns. "Incentivizing this behavior rather than penalizing bad behaviors is generally a better way to accomplish that."

Ossoff also has another bill included in the Build Back Better bill – Clean Energy for All Homes Act – that would, if passed, extend current tax incentives for installing solar and make them credits, so that low income people and businesses just starting out who would not owe enough taxes to make the tax break worthwhile could get the money back as credit.

"We need to get beyond treating solar as a hood ornament for rich people's houses, and that's what Sen. Ossoff's bill is going to do," Jacobs said. "The vast majority of solar jobs are installation jobs, whether they're utility scale projects, 100 megawatts, or they're the 5 megawatts on a house, but that's where the jobs are."

Demand in Georgia

According to Jacobs, Georgia is the third largest state for solar installations in the Southeast, after Florida and North Carolina, and should surpass North Carolina by 2024. On Nov. 8, Georgia Power announced it is seeking bids for another 1,000 megawatts of solar power.

This demand is part of what brought Hanwha Q Cell to Georgia in the first place.

"Georgia, and the southeast in general, is actually the leading region of the United States for solar demand, more than even the desert southwest," Moskowitz said. "So this is the place that a company like Q Cells can be closest to its customers."

Moskowitz also cited the significant experience in Georgia for high tech manufacturing and the institutions, like Georgia Tech, that create an educated workforce, along with access to the Port of Savannah and Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport.

Other solar manufacturers have come to the southeast too. JinkoSolar has a solar panel plant in Jacksonville, Florida, that brought 200 jobs, according to Jacobs. Jut last month NanoPV, another solar company, announced a manufacturing and distribution center in Sumter County, Georgia, north of Albany, that would employ 500 people.

Ossoff's bills, if passed, would be just part of moving toward the Biden administration's 40% solar goal. Moskowitz said they are also looking at other policy tools around trade and government procurement to encourage domestic production and installation.

"We're at an inflection point in our industry where solar is really making a huge dent in our nation's electricity mix, it needs to make a bigger dent," Moskowitz said. "We need to deploy

solar at a greater scale if the United States wants to both modernize its electric grid and help mitigate the risk of climate change … If these types of tools aren't used, we risk the United States becoming overly dependent on imports to meet those targets."