Under the U.S. Frontier-Related Act (UFLPA), U.S. Customs has detained a large number of imported solar modules.
Philip Shen, managing director of ROTH Capital Partners, said an industry source reported that U.S. Customs had detained as many as 3GW of solar modules since the bill was enacted, and Shen said that by the end of the year, as many as 9GW are expected to accumulate Up to 12GW of solar modules will be seized and prevented from entering the US market.
It is reported that last week, media reported that due to the influence of the Xinjiang-related Act (UFLPA) in the first half of the year, the photovoltaic installed capacity in the United States suffered a serious decline in the first half of the year. According to a report by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the United States will add 4.2GW of photovoltaic capacity in the first half of 2022, accounting for only 28%.
After the U.S. anti-dumping investigation on imported photovoltaic cell modules from Southeast Asia in the first half of the year hit the local solar industry hard, on June 21 this year, the U.S. so-called "Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act" (UFLPA) came into effect, which further hit the U.S. photovoltaic industry. The Wall Street Journal said that since the solar polysilicon produced in Xinjiang accounts for nearly half of the global supply, the damage to the local photovoltaic industry by the United States' implementation of a comprehensive ban on Xinjiang-related products is difficult to measure.
The Act defaults that all or part of the goods produced in China's Xinjiang region are produced through forced labor and are prohibited from entering the U.S. market. At the same time, many Chinese photovoltaic companies are included in the ban list. Related products entering the United States will first be detained by customs, unless Companies have to provide proof of non-forced labor before they are allowed to pass, and the act led to the disruption of the U.S. solar industry supply chain in the first half of the year.
The media last week expressed pessimism about the bill, arguing that it would have the adverse effect of disrupting logistics and rising costs. Some media even bluntly stated that if the United States strictly implements this measure, it will have an impact on its domestic industry and even the global economy. About 1 million companies and billions of dollars in economic activities will be affected. In the future, it is likely to exacerbate the already serious situation in the United States. inflation problem.
However, in response to the plight of the local photovoltaic industry, the White House signed an inflation-cutting bill to stimulate local manufacturing, including a $369 billion climate investment bill, focusing on clean energy manufacturing, including solar panels, wind turbines, Numerous segments including batteries, electric vehicles, hydrogen production, and key minerals. And implement the tax credit policy (ITC) to promote clean power and energy storage, focusing on investing in eligible clean energy power companies from 2022-2026, the tax credit can reach 30%, and the tax credit period is 10 years.
Last Friday, the U.S. Senate passed the above-mentioned Inflation Reduction Act, and on Monday (August 16), U.S. President Joe Biden officially signed the "Inflation Reduction Act of 2022", which came into effect. The bill claims to increase fiscal revenue by $740 billion, while increasing government spending by a total of $430 billion for energy, climate change and health care subsidies, of which $369 billion will be used for climate change and clean energy.