E&E News interviewed CEA’s CEO, Andy Klump, in a recent article covering Biden’s possibly conflicting priorities of supporting American manufacturing and meeting strict climate goals.

“President Biden has pledged to make the United States a leader in clean energy manufacturing as part of his efforts to jump-start the economy and create "millions" of green jobs.

But when it comes to boosting U.S. production of solar parts and modules — key technologies in Biden's plans to zero out electricity-sector carbon emissions — the administration faces an uphill battle.”

With Asia, and China in particular, holding a firm global advantage in solar and wind manufacturing, achieving both domestic manufacuring goals and deploying significant renewable energy faces many challenges.

Bringing Solar Supply Chains and Manufacturing ‘Back’ to America

The article further addresses the politically expedient notion of creating or “returning” manufacturing jobs to the United States - a talking point that has transcended political parties and has been echoed by the likes of Obama and Trump - when the reality shows the loss of almost 5 million manufacturing jobs since 1997 according to the Economic Policy Institute.

“For Biden's manufacturing push to be effective for solar and beyond, the administration must think about supply chains holistically, according to analysts and industry representatives. That means incentivizing and supporting production of not just panels but the materials that go into them, including glass, aluminum, steel and polysilicon, or at least finding ways to make those materials cheap and readily available.

‘There are a lot of buzzwords about manufacturing job creation, but part of the challenge is manufacturing requires not just the manufacturing jobs for the facility, but for many other facets of the supply chain,’ said Andy Klump, CEO of Clean Energy Associates, a solar and battery advisory firm.”

To do so, the Biden administration will need to support and implement policies on the demand side as well as the supply side, and implement energy manufacturing tax credits as incentives.

Read the full E&E News article - Biden’s ‘Buy America’ plan may hit a solar wall and read about CEA’s Solar Supply Chain Full Component Traceability Audit.