In the last three years, the companies that make solar panels in America have placed one of the largest manufacturing bets in recent memory.
First Solar has invested $1.1 billion in Alabama and another $1.1 billion in Louisiana, on top of three factories and an R&D campus in Ohio, with further expansion underway in South Carolina. Qcells has invested nearly $3 billion to build an integrated supply chain in Georgia, employing thousands. Corning is putting $1.5 billion into a solar wafer plant in Michigan, with 1,500 jobs to follow. These are American manufacturers, not importers — real factories in real communities, employing workers who are proud of what they make.
Each of those investments was a bet. A bet that the United States is finally serious about reshoring an industry that Beijing spent two decades and hundreds of billions of dollars trying to corner. A bet that the workforce, the infrastructure, and the political environment in a given state would support a multi-decade industrial commitment. A bet that the country would still want what these workers build by the time the lines came online.
That bet is paying off, for the workers, for the host communities, and for an American supply chain that, not long ago, was on the verge of being owned outright by a strategic competitor.
But a bet is a two-sided thing. And in a growing number of statehouses and county commissions, the other side of the table is starting to fold.
Across the South and Midwest, lawmakers are advancing moratoria and outright bans on solar deployment. Some are framed as siting concerns, some as agricultural protection, some as ideological pushback against an industry policymakers have decided they don’t like. Whatever the rationale, the practical effect is the same: a state welcomes the factory, celebrates the investment, tours the ribbon-cutting, and then tells the market that the product coming off the line isn’t welcome there.
That signal is hard for an industry to read and disheartening for over 50,000 workers in the solar manufacturing supply chain. Companies deciding where to place the next billion-dollar facility are paying close attention to whether a state is open to this industry end-to-end, or only to the parts that make for a good press release. So is Beijing, which has spent the better part of a generation betting America would lose interest in building things at home. Every signal that domestic demand for American-made solar is unwelcome in its own country is a signal China is happy to receive.
States and localities have legitimate interests in how solar is deployed, where projects are sited, how they coexist with farmland, how host communities are engaged, and what happens at the end of their lives. Those are real questions, and the industry has real answers, including agrivoltaic designs that keep land in agricultural production and siting frameworks developed in partnership with rural stakeholders. American manufacturers want these conversations. We benefit when projects go in the right places, are built with the right materials, and are supported by the communities that host them.
What we cannot work with is being shut out of the conversation entirely.
Banning a category of energy development preempts the market rather than shaping it. It tells a landowner that they cannot decide what to do with their land. It tells a utility it cannot use one of the few resources it can deploy quickly enough to keep up with surging demand from AI data centers, electrification, and advanced manufacturing. And it tells the next manufacturer weighing a US investment, and supporting hundreds of good-paying jobs, that the welcome mat in this country comes with conditions that may change after the concrete is poured.
There is a better posture available, and it is the one most of these states already take with every other industry they court. Set the rules. Hold projects to them. Let landowners, utilities, and communities make their own decisions within that frame. That is how you build a lasting industrial base and ensure the next two decades of solar manufacturing happen here rather than there.
The companies that the SEMA Coalition represents have made their bet. We have put the factories on the ground, hired the workers, signed the supply agreements, and committed to communities that, in many cases, had long waited for an investment of this scale.
Banning solar won’t deliver lower prices. It won’t strengthen American manufacturing, and it certainly won’t achieve energy dominance. We are all-in on these states. The question worth asking, plainly, is whether these states are all-in on us.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those held by pv magazine.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: [email protected].
Comments
Please login to comment
Thursday, July 16, 2026
4:00 pm – 5:00 pm CEST, Berlin, Paris, Madrid
The June issue of pv magazine Global is out now!
Available in print and digital – get your copy today!
Thursday, September 9, 2026
11:00 am – 12:30 pm CEST, Berlin, Paris, Madrid
A two-day conference in Austin, Texas, bringing together leaders in US solar manufacturing, equipment specification, and factory execution.
Entries open in seven categories: Modules, Inverters, BoS, BESS, Manufacturing, Sustainability, Projects.
April 01 – August 31, 2026
pv magazine USA hosts its third multi-day virtual event on advancing U.S. solar and energy storage markets, covering financing, supply chains, and distributed energy’s role in grid resilience.
You have no items in your basket.
