In the six months since the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed into law, the US has seen over 100,000 new clean energy jobs created across 31 states as companies begin to capitalise on the incentives and security that the bill offers.
Amid potential supply chain bottlenecks as China increases its PV manufacturing dominance, companies in markets such as the US, India and Europe are looking to leverage new policy support to scale up domestic production. Jules Scully charts the industry’s efforts to onshore solar module manufacturing.
Solar investors believe that Europe can be a competitive market for PV manufacturing and compete with the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), as ESG and energy security concerns will drive money to the continent.
The European Commission has released its Green Deal Industrial Plan based upon four pillars aimed to scale up a domestic manufacturing capacity for net-zero technologies.
The largest solar investment in US history, a pivot to a vertically integrated PV manufacturing facility in the state of Georgia by Qcells, was enabled by a combination of state support, federal government investment and related benefits coming from the Inflation Reduction (IRA), according to the company.
CubicPV, a US solar manufacturer backed by Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures, is looking to leverage support included in the country’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to set up what it claims will be the largest PV wafer manufacturing facility outside of China.
Lawmakers from both sides of the US House of Representatives have issued a resolution to repeal President Joe Biden’s waiver on solar import tariffs from Southeast Asia.
Solar PV manufacturer Qcells has signed a deal with Microsoft to supply at least 2.5GW of its modules to projects from which the tech giant will purchase renewable energy.
Indian solar module manufacturing capacity is forecast to reach around 95GW – up from 39GW at the end of September 2022 – according to research from analyst and consultancy Mercom India Research.
