{"id":36611,"date":"2022-12-27T19:05:44","date_gmt":"2022-12-28T02:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-solar-industry-says-federal-investment-lowers-tariff-threat\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:32:39","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:32:39","slug":"colorado-solar-industry-says-federal-investment-lowers-tariff-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-solar-industry-says-federal-investment-lowers-tariff-threat\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado solar industry says federal investment lowers tariff threat"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Recently-installed
Recently-installed solar panels line the roof of the Marv Kay Stadium on Dec. 8, 2022, at the Colorado School of Mines campus in Golden. The campus now runs enough solar panels to produce at least 1.5 megawatts of the 8 peak megawatts needed to run the engineering school for its 7,000 students. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Colorado\u2019s solar industry leaders say a U.S. Commerce Department threat of tariffs on some imported panels should not further disrupt their expanding market, and they add that new federal subsidies for American panel makers will ease shortages down the road.<\/p>\n

The Commerce Department\u2019s finding early in December that a few Southeast Asian panel makers are dumping subsidized Chinese parts here<\/a> is on hold for now, and the preliminary ruling will not further cut into panel supplies, officials from Namaste Solar, SunShare and a trade association said. In the spring, Colorado solar installers said worldwide shipping of panels had virtually ceased as Commerce officials threatened massive tariffs on panels in transit, and even retroactively on delivered panels. Colorado solar companies delayed projects and prepared for mass layoffs.<\/p>\n

But the White House over the summer put any new tariffs on hold until 2024 after an outcry from U.S. solar installers, who said new import restrictions would harm the transition to clean energy. Meanwhile, Colorado solar leaders say, new subsidies for U.S. manufacturing plants from the Inflation Reduction Act will make them price competitive with Asian imports and bolster overall supplies.<\/p>\n

Cooler heads prevailed after the early 2022 tariff scare<\/a>, and import challenges will not \u201cstop the transition to renewable energy in the United States,\u201d said David Amster-Olszewski, founder of community solar garden developer SunShare. \u201cI think it\u2019s just complication. What you want is companies like ours not spending time working on all of these nuances of import-export trade issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Commerce Department warned that four Southeast Asian companies appeared to be largely reselling Chinese-made panels in order to avoid heavy tariffs on Chinese imports. But the assessment won\u2019t be final until May 2023, and is negated anyway by the Biden Administration\u2019s imposition of a ban on new tariffs into 2024, Amster-Olszewski said.<\/p>\n

Federal regulators found four other Southeast Asian companies had changed their practices and were truly manufacturing panels themselves, and could avoid the super tariffs that can triple the U.S. price of panels.<\/p>\n

The fact Commerce put four international importers on notice for 2023 \u201cputs more stress in the process and more hurdles, but all of this is not final,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot good, but certainly not the end of the world,\u201d said Mike Kruger, president of the Colorado Solar and Storage Association trade group.<\/p>\n

Like other solar CEOs, Amster-Olszewski said in a market where 80% of panels are currently made overseas, he prefers the carrots of boosting U.S. panel makers to the sticks of new import tariffs. The Inflation Reduction Act provides lucrative tax credits to domestic panel manufacturers, and handfuls of other credits to projects that use U.S. parts.<\/p>\n

U.S. industry leader First Solar immediately announced a billion-dollar new plant<\/a> in Alabama, attributing growth to the opportunities expected from the new tax credits.<\/p>\n

\u201cUse a carrot approach, and industry will follow, and sure enough, that\u2019s exactly what they did,\u201d Amster-Olszewski said.<\/p>\n

The Inflation Reduction Act \u201cprovides our domestic manufacturing industry with market stability, manufacturing support, incentives for projects to use domestic content,\u201d said developer and installer Namaste Solar\u2019s business development director Eliot Abel. \u201cCarrots, right? Whereas the proverbial stick, the tariffs, weren\u2019t ever going to do enough to create meaningful change\u201d for U.S.-based production.<\/p>\n

Panel supplies are still tight and raising project prices in Colorado, industry officials say, from utility-scale developments meant to replace coal-fired power plants to 10-megawatt community solar gardens or individual home installations. The lockdown on the entire industry executives warned about during the early 2022 tariffs debate, however, has eased. Developers are refocused on working out supply chain kinks and finding affordable panels wherever they can.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not the same as it was when nobody was shipping anything because of the threat of retroactivity\u201d of tariffs, Abel said, \u201cand not knowing who was going to be implicated. That was a complete freeze. Shipping is happening. More of the impact is that there\u2019s still not enough supply for demand and the prices are still high, and I don\u2019t there\u2019s a line of sight to that coming down.\u201d<\/p>\n

SunShare is paying about 35% more for solar panel units than two years ago. While developers all welcome the federal subsidy act, they are realistic about when new U.S. production will have an impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sheer amount of time it takes to get things up and running, to invest, to build out a plan, to hire the people, to have all the machinery in place and to start actually producing the levels they want to be producing, it\u2019s not going to be here in a year and a half,\u201d Abel said.<\/p>\n

So the 2024 reckoning lingers for final decisions on import tariffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving a looming risk of trade wars out there is not good,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, journalist-owned news outlet exploring issues of statewide interest. Sign up for a newsletter and read more at coloradosun.com<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inflation Reduction Act will boost U.S. makers of solar panels, easing worries that Commerce Department tariffs will choke off building stock<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1030,28,1425],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-36611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-environment","tag-headlines","tag-solar-energy"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36611"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83399,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36611\/revisions\/83399"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36611"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=36611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}