San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
SOLAR POLICY
countries to assemble and export, he said.
“It’s not a secret,” Mutchler said. “A lot of people in the U.S. trying to get the advent of green energy and cheap electricity, they know what’s going on.”
Auxin’s petition has forced Biden to balance competing priorities: quickly shifting from fossil fuels toward cleaner energy sources versus having unionized workers build more goods in the U.S.
Also, the U.S. originally banned solar exports from China in part because much of the polysilicon — a key raw material for solar panels — comes from Xinjiang, where the U.S. has accused China of genocide and forced labor of the Uyghur ethnic group.
“We think we’re on the same playing field, and we’re really not. We have investors that need to get their money back, and the (Chinese) government, they’re patient,” Mutchler said.
Costs for things such as real estate, capital investment, equipment, labor and health insurance are “drastically different” for U.S. makers trying to compete with their Chinese counterparts, he said.
“They’re selling for less than I can buy the material for,” he said. “And they have a completed product.”
Winners and losers
Auxin’s CEO and some Republican officials criticized Biden’s decision to freeze tariffs on solar imports from the four Southeast Asian nations for two years, arguing the administration is allowing China to break U.S. trade laws by circumventing tariffs.
City-owned CPS Energy said the two-year suspension on solar tariffs will help the utility get new contracts with solar farms across the finish line.
CPS in May signed a deal to buy power from a 300-megawatt solar farm to be built in
Goliad County by 2024 or 2025. That was the first tranche of 900 megawatts of solar generation CPS has been planning to add for over a year.
“Tariffs were certainly holding up some of our other potential partners on the remainder of the 600 megawatts because they were hearing the president might provide a moratorium, but they didn’t want to commit to a price and then that not happen and the price point changes,” CPS interim CEO Rudy Garza said. Tariffs “could’ve impacted the contract price significantly, and those third parties would’ve been under water on our contract.”
With Biden’s move giving CPS another two years, Garza said, the utility is getting deals done.
“Since the president has come out with that decision, the pace of moving forward has certainly changed,” he said. “I’m hopeful that we’ll get the remainder of the 600 megawatts under contract between now and the end of this year.”
Mutchler with Mission Solar said the suspension of tariffs took the teeth out of the Commerce Department’s investigation. But at the same time, he said it’s unreasonable to expect the that U.S. can ever build a supply chain for solar technology that rivals China’s. For example, there aren’t many U.S. producers of the type of lowiron glass that best transmits light for solar panels, he said.
Mutchler said he supports the Solar Energy Manufacturing Act, a provision tucked into
Biden’s broader Build Back Better agenda that’s been mired in Congress. It would give manufacturers like Mission Solar a tax credit based on how many solar modules they produce.
And the separate COMPETES Act would provide low-interest loans and grants to finance solar component manufacturing.
“We definitely need a bridge to a long-term industrial policy or some tax policy,” Mutchler said. “Is it about the sale of the project now, or is it truly about green energy? Because I’ve seen some factories (in China), and they are not too green.
And we already know about the Xinjiang region, where they have forced labor.
“If we have this industrial policy, I think the U.S. will be just fine,” he said. “It’s the only way we’re going to compete if we want to be green.”