HPQ Silicon Inc V.HPQ

Reshoring silicon photovoltaics manufacturing

[Oden6570]

Manufacturing c-Si PV panels is attractive to pursue domestically as reshored production demonstrates many more benefits. The domestic production of solar products also aids in building broader coalitions and offers possible spillover benefits for climate policy. Outsourcing production to other countries over time is not a sustainable business model55. Offshoring can potentially result in job losses, wage reduction, and disruption of business innovation and productivity, which leads to policymakers proposing anti-offshoring or reshoring bills and policies that provide tax incentives for domestic production56. A reshored manufacturing base in solar PV may provide benefits such as more direct local employment and a more resilient energy supply system. Foreign manufacturers may be risky, impractical, or undesirable partners for public funds, whereas establishing a strong link between public funding of research and development and the domestic private sector has been identified as crucial to achieving climate goals, both by lowering the risks of scale-up and by granting access to markets57. The reshoring decision and climate agendas harmonize to ramp up climate actions, as carbon emission factors and EPBT of c-Si PV reshored manufacturing in the future reduce dramatically. If reshored manufacturing can be achieved in 2035, among 31% of the reduction in carbon emission factor from panel production, reshoring leads to a 23% of emission factor decrease while renewable penetration to the power grid contributes to 8%. On the other hand, among 14% of EPBT reductions from panel manufacturing, 4% of EPBT declines are attributed to reshoring, while the remaining 10% are the credits of renewable penetration. Renewable penetration and reshoring work together to create enormous energy and climate benefits. Renewable penetration to the power grid can only be made possible through more c-Si PV solar panel manufacturing and can only be achieved as the solar panel industry expands. As the U.S. achieves its energy transition goal by 2035 and 2050, the reshored panel manufacturing will benefit from large shares of renewables in the power grid by then in return. Besides energy and environmental strengths, the import costs of c-Si manufacturing inputs add 11% to the total expenditure, while a build-up in the domestic PV supply chain from “cradle-to-site” would dramatically reduce the cost11. Despite the minimized cost, c-Si PV manufacturing materials are mostly benign and available in very large quantities and have demonstrated long-term durability11. Besides, along with reshored manufacturing and increasing renewable power sources, technological innovations and breakthroughs can help achieve lower carbon emission factors and EPBT (15% by module efficiency advancement, 11% by performance ratio improvement) from PV panel production by 2050. Apart from withstanding supply crisis, reshored manufacturing is appealing to implement due to the numerous advantages listed above, which can be harmonized with technological advancements and renewable penetration to the power grid, and the conclusion of this study has important implications for other regions or industries to secure a reliable supply base.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-36827-z