pv magazine recently interviewed CEA’s Vice President of Technology, Paul Wormser, and Senior Policy Analyst, Christian Roselund, to discuss the recent U.S. suspension on solar tariffs for modules manufactured in Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, and other executive orders taken by the Biden Administration.

Paul Wormser noted that prior to the executive action, neither the buyer nor the supplier wanted to accept the risk, resulting in a bit of a standoff. The executive action will help remove some of that uncertainty in the short term. Wormser said that “most people feel this was a positive move and very helpful to managing some of the challenges on the table right now.”

Other Supply Chain Challenges

“Unfortunately, there’s still going to be a dip in US deployments this year, versus what most of us would have predicted at the beginning of the year,” said Wormser. “There are ongoing issues with WRO (Withhold Release Order), there are new issues looming with UFLPA (Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act), and even though this particular issue of AD/CVD was ‘solved’ on Monday, it’s substantially towards the middle of the year before we had that solved.”

Domestic Manufacturing

Christian Roselund shared insights on the Biden Administration’s invocation of the Defense Production Act to boost domestic production of solar modules. Roselund said that the U.S. government’s actions are likely insufficient to meaningfully boost US solar manufacturing, since running a PV module factory is much more costly in the United States than other countries where solar manufacturing is prevalent. “Roselund said significant incentives to address the cost differential are likely the only path forward to make US solar competitive.”

Read Paul and Christian’s full comments and the full pv magazine article - Biden halts solar tariffs for two years. What’s next?