US Chooses China Bashing Over Climate Saving
All nations need to “massively fast-track climate efforts” if humanity is to limit the “devastation that has already been inflicted on swathes of the world” by greenhouse gas-related climate change. The urgency couldn’t be clearer in that introduction by UN Secretary General António Guterres of the last part of the sixth assessment by UN experts worldwide on the climate. Yet despite all the bruhaha about the supposedly “transformative” Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the US is anything but urgent about, and is fast-tracking nothing to do with, the climate.
How so? Isn’t Washington spending hundreds of billions of dollars to get private industry to build clean energy infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities? In an unhurried way, it is. But it will take years. Getting free of China has priority over the climate in the IRA, in other climate legislation and in Biden administration implementation. The urgent thing is China bashing. The climate can wait when it comes to US policy.
The results are clear. China itself installed 86 gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity last year, up 59% from 2021. Europe added over 41 GW, up 47% year-on-year. The US added barely more than 20 GW of solar in 2022, down 16% from 2021.
The prognosis for US solar progress this year is mixed. A solar-industry sponsored report says installations could surge 41% to 28.4 GW– if import regs stabilize and if flexible rules for deciding who qualifies for IRA tax credits come out quickly. Otherwise, 2023 will look a lot like 2022, with solar installations flat or even falling more.
Discretionary Enforcement
The two big problems facing solar projects in the US are well known and relate to the current taste in both Congress and the Administration for cold-warring with China. The first problem started early last year, when the Commerce Dept decided to investigate whether solar panels imported from Southeast Asia are really Chinese, with other countries merely used to bypass tariffs dating back to President Trump.
Everybody involved knows that most of the companies shipping panels from Southeast Asia are Chinese-owned and their panels include components from China, so if the Biden administration wants to find that they are, in fact, Chinese, it can do so — and slap huge fines on companies that import them. Knowing it was a matter of discretionary enforcement from which they had little recourse, importers largely stopped bringing panels into the US.
The mixed mood of the Biden administration on climate versus China bashing was evident throughout last year. In the summer, Biden issued an executive order guaranteeing no tariffs or other penalties on Southeast Asian solar imports for two years. That was in response to screams of pain from US solar installers. But in December, the Commerce Dept. found the Southeast Asian panels were indeed Chinese. Now, a bipartisan contingent in Congress is threatening to overturn Biden’s executive order and apply tariffs immediately. No one knows what’s next.
The second problem facing solar panel importers is getting the Biden administration to stop holding up panels coming directly from China while it investigates whether the panels contain any polysilicon made in China’s huge Xinjiang province. Xinjiang is home to more than half of the world’s polysilicon. The US has made it illegal to import Xinjiang polysilicon because of allegations that factories in the province use forced labor provided by the government from the Uyghur population.
But the Chinese routinely say the polysilicon doesn’t come from Xinjiang, and it’s impossible to prove the case either way, again making US enforcement discretionary. If the Administration wants to bring in Chinese panels, it can. If it doesn’t, it can stop them. Frequently over the last year, the panels have been stopped.
Matters of Priority
My point isn’t to say that the US shouldn’t build up domestic solar manufacturing capacity. It absolutely should, and the government needs to support that effort. I said so last year this time. Now, legislation is in place to do that, and factory construction is starting. All that is good.
However, it will take years to build enough factories to allow the US to move ahead quickly on utility-scale solar installations without imports. In the meantime, the Climate Crisis demands that the US import the panels it needs. This can be done through exemptions of the type Biden has ordered for the Southeast Asian imports — but isn’t defending strongly enough against Congressional attacks.
Also, China is willing to keep sending panels to the US and expanding its already huge solar manufacturing base, even knowing that America is working hard to develop alternative capacity. Nor is a single Uyghur being helped by strict enforcement of legislation designed more to paint China as evil than to improve the situation of people in Xinjiang.
Like the US, Europe is trying to rebuild and expand its solar manufacturing, which succumbed earlier this century to competition from China. But under natural gas price pressure resulting from the Ukraine War and related sanctions, the Europeans are proving that a balanced approach is possible.
EU countries are both installing solar and other renewable generation as quickly as possible using Chinese modules — and attempting to avoid a repeat with renewables of the heavy dependence on a single outside supplier that proved so problematic with Russian fossil fuels. They are now considering a proposal that would require Europe to manufacture 40% of its own solar and other clean-energy equipment by 2030. That seems like a reasonable goal.
Washington is pushing the Europeans, and especially the Germans, to put China bashing first if the two goals come into conflict. But indications are that, if push comes to shove, the EU will choose to keep the renewables taps open.
Like Europe, the US should be able to pursue two goals at the same time, with roughly equal zeal and an understanding that it is vital for humanity and the Earth that the climate crisis not be ignored. The Biden Administration isn’t full of climate deniers. That’s obvious. But it does not appear to see the climate crisis as the top-priority crisis it is. More cities, towns and farms may have to burn up, dry up or flood before that message gets through.
