The US clean energy manufacturing boom has begun. But demand for all these products is skyrocketing as the energy transition advances, so rising to meet 2023 demand is not nearly enough. And critical earlier steps in the supply chain haven’t caught up.
Take, for example, one of the first new solar plants to come to the U.S.: South Korean company Qcells opened a factory in northern Georgia in 2019 that can crank out 1.7 gigawatts’ worth of solar modules annually. But the factory takes photovoltaic cells made overseas and turns them into finished products. That leaves the earlier manufacturing steps offshore: cell production, silicon wafers, and the polysilicon that wafers are made from.
The US clean energy manufacturing boom has begun. Now… | Canary Media