Your Daily Dose of Climate Hope: October 22, 2024
Your Daily Dose of Climate Hope: October 22, 2024
U.S. solar manufacturing is BOOMING!
U.S. solar manufacturing has nearly quadrupled since the IRA was passed, with an amazing new vertically integrated solar factory in Alabama just one of a multitude of new success stories.
Tell Congress to protect the Inflation Reduction Act cleantech manufacturing tax credits!
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Reasons For Hope
U.S. champion First Solar has opened a new solar panel factory in Alabama, capable of building 3.5 GW of solar per year! It’s completely vertically integrated, with First Solar’s thin-film solar manufacturing process reportedly able to “transform a sheet of glass into a fully formed solar panel in approximately four hours all under one roof.” Furthermore, a twin factory in Louisiana is under construction.
“This is the first of two fully vertically integrated solar manufacturing facilities that solidify the role of the Gulf Coast states in enabling America’s all-of-the-above energy strategy.
This energy technology manufacturing facility produces American solar panels, with American-made components sourced from a supply chain that spans the country.
The hundreds of people that operate this facility represent the next generation of American energy workers and are joined by thousands more steelworkers, glassworkers, miners, truck drivers, railroad workers, and others that enable our mission to support our country’s energy security.”
-Mark Widmar, CEO of First Solar.
This is one of many such wins from the Biden-Harris Boom! Amazingly, U.S. solar manufacturing capacity has nearly quadrupled since the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law in 2022. The Department of Energy now projects that by 2026, 80% of solar panels installed in America will be made in the USA!
As economist Noah Smith recently wrote, “Solar manufacturers are ramping up production, and the U.S. is getting the ability to build the pieces of the solar supply chain that it had previously outsourced entirely to China and other countries. This is still small potatoes compared to what China can make, but it means that if a war breaks out, U.S. deployment of solar power won’t be cut off.”
This is all made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act’s vital tax credits incentivizing American cleantech manufacturing.