How Qcells’ Georgia factory is surviving US solar policy whiplash
The Trump administration, by contrast, is taking a stick approach. While last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or OBBBA, revoked most of the tax credits, it also made solar equipment from certain countries — including China — ineligible for the few tax credits that remain. That, along with the new tariffs, may help a U.S. manufacturer like Qcells compete with Chinese imports, which are now more expensive.
The two policy approaches have the same ultimate goal, according to researcher Coco Zhang of the banking and investment firm ING. But it’s been whiplash for companies.
Following Trump’s latest executive actions, Qcells is still likely able to find a way to be successful, Zhang said. But Qcells has already made a multibillion-dollar investment in its brand-new facility that took more than three years to come online. For other companies with less capital and poorer timing, the supply-side incentives for domestic production may not be enough — especially when the policies could completely change again.
As a part of the OBBBA, the Trump administration closed the IRA loophole that had left room for China-based solar companies to simply set up shop in the U.S., which, according to Zhang, may go further still toward rooting out Chinese competition. In the long run, she’s optimistic that the U.S. solar panel industry can complete its shift to domestic production. But because the rules discouraging foreign ownership cut deeper into the supply chain, those restrictions and the policy back-and-forth could make things harder to navigate in the short term, she said.
The short-term outlook is complicated for those buying solar panels, too. The phaseout of federal clean energy tax credits removed a major incentive to develop new solar projects, and the Trump administration has taken steps to cancel federal funding for clean energy projects and add new hurdles for solar and wind installations on federal land. The courts have blocked or reversed some of those actions, but the delays add costs and uncertainties even for projects that do ultimately move forward.
In the first quarter of this year, clean energy advocacy group E2 tracked nearly $13 billion in abandoned investments in solar, wind, and battery projects. But some $18 billion in new projects were announced as companies scrambled to meet the deadline of the expiring tax credits. While the new tariffs and price controls on polysilicon could help U.S. manufacturers compete to supply the solar developments that remain, they could also drive up costs for developers, Zhang said, and “limited U.S. supply means many will still depend on imports and face higher costs.”
“We absolutely should make solar, right? Like it is the fastest deployed, lowest cost foreseeable,” said Damiani. “Solar will be, for the next hundred years, a good portion of our energy.”
The questions, experts agreed, aren’t whether solar development will keep happening, but how quickly, how much it will cost, and who — and where — will make the solar panels.