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Policy Watch

Tariffs Hit Solar Cells

And more of the week’s biggest news in clean energy policy.

Solar Panels
Unsplash/Heatmap

1. Seasons change, tariffs stay the same – The Biden administration is putting a duty on solar cells from four South Asian countries believed to be pass-throughs for Chinese imports: Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

  • The tariffs range wildly from less than 1% to almost 300%. Impacted companies include Jintek, Hanwha Q Cells (a.k.a. Qcells), JinkoSolar, and Trina Solar.
  • What this’ll mean: developers wrestling with pricier imported cells from some of the most popular sources.
  • These tariffs resulted from an anti-dumping case filed by an alliance of U.S. solar manufacturers including First Solar, Convalt Energy, REC Silicon, and, ironically, also Qcells.

2. New money for new nuclear – The Energy Department yesterday finalized over $2.8 billion in loans and grants to restart the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan.

  • The plant – to be operated by Holtec – shut down in 2022 which means, as reports indicate, it shouldn’t take long to recommission and could be re-operational by next year.
  • Nuclear Energy Institute CEO Maria Korsnick told me earlier this year over pasta that she was vying for more direct investments to individual projects, partially to make it harder to repeal Inflation Reduction Act programs.

3. California is so silly sometimes – A judge has temporarily halted a California rule that would’ve stopped some solar developers in the state from building battery storage.

  • California’s contractor licensing board had set forth regulation effective Oct. 1 stopping solar equipment workers from installing or maintaining batteries beyond 80 kWH (which… is obviously not a lot of power).
  • The regulation will now be suspended until a legal challenge from solar and battery storage companies can be resolved.

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Hotspots

Judge, Siding With Trump, Saves Solar From NEPA

And more on the week’s biggest conflicts around renewable energy projects.

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Jackson County, Kansas – A judge has rejected a Hail Mary lawsuit to kill a single solar farm over it benefiting from the Inflation Reduction Act, siding with arguments from a somewhat unexpected source — the Trump administration’s Justice Department — which argued that projects qualifying for tax credits do not require federal environmental reviews.

  • We previously reported that this lawsuit filed by frustrated Kansans targeted implementation of the IRA when it first was filed in February. That was true then, but afterwards an amended complaint was filed that focused entirely on the solar farm at the heart of the case: NextEra’s Jeffrey Solar. The case focuses now on whether Jeffrey benefiting from IRA credits means it should’ve gotten reviewed under the National Environmental Policy Act.
  • Perhaps surprisingly to some, the Trump Justice Department argued against these NEPA reviews – a posture that jibes with the administration’s approach to streamlining the overall environmental analysis process but works in favor of companies using IRA credits.
  • In a ruling that came down on Tuesday, District Judge Holly Teeter ruled the landowners lacked standing to sue because “there is a mismatch between their environmental concerns tied to construction of the Jeffrey Solar Project and the tax credits and regulations,” and they did not “plausibly allege the substantial federal control and responsibility necessary to trigger NEPA review.”
  • “Plaintiffs’ claims, arguments, and requested relief have been difficult to analyze,” Teeter wrote in her opinion. “They are trying to use the procedural requirements of NEPA as a roadblock because they do not like what Congress has chosen to incentivize and what regulations Jackson County is considering. But those challenges must be made to the legislative branch, not to the judiciary.”

2. Portage County, Wisconsin – The largest solar project in the Badger State is now one step closer to construction after settling with environmentalists concerned about impacts to the Greater Prairie Chicken, an imperiled bird species beloved in wildlife conservation circles.

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Spotlight

Renewables Swept Up in Data Center Backlash

Just look at Virginia.

A data center.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Solar and wind projects are getting swept up in the blowback to data center construction, presenting a risk to renewable energy companies who are hoping to ride the rise of AI in an otherwise difficult moment for the industry.

The American data center boom is going to demand an enormous amount of electricity and renewables developers believe much of it will come from solar and wind. But while these types of energy generation may be more easily constructed than, say, a fossil power plant, it doesn’t necessarily mean a connection to a data center will make a renewable project more popular. Not to mention data centers in rural areas face complaints that overlap with prominent arguments against solar and wind – like noise and impacts to water and farmland – which is leading to unfavorable outcomes for renewable energy developers more broadly when a community turns against a data center.

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Q&A

How the Wind Industry Can Fight Back

A conversation with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications

The Q&A subject.
Heatmap Illustration

Today’s conversation is with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications, a D.C.-based communications firm that focuses on defending zero- and low-carbon energy and federal investments in climate action. Moyer, a veteran communications adviser who previously worked on Capitol Hill, has some hot takes as of late about how he believes industry and political leaders have in his view failed to properly rebut attacks on solar and wind energy, in addition to the Inflation Reduction Act. On Tuesday he sent an email blast out to his listserv – which I am on – that boldly declared: “The Wind Industry’s Strategy is Failing.”

Of course after getting that email, it shouldn’t surprise readers of The Fight to hear I had to understand what he meant by that, and share it with all of you. So here goes. The following conversation has been abridged and lightly edited for clarity.

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