Top solar companies, banks, and insurers have stopped doing business with at least a half dozen recently built U.S. solar panel factories because of restrictions on Chinese-linked businesses attached to tax credits by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Reuters reported this week, citing industry executives and internal documents.
The law, which blocks manufacturing credits from going to factories that are tied to China, is meant to address Chinese dominance in the supply chain and help with reshoring production, but it also threatens to slow the deployment of solar energy, according to the report.
"It's holding up financings of desperately needed solar and storage projects," Keith Martin, an attorney at Norton Rose Fulbright, told Reuters.
Top U.S. residential solar installer Sunrun (RUN) reportedly is among the companies now avoiding Chinese suppliers.
Banks including Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs are said to have scaled back tax-equity financing for some solar projects due to concerns that interpretations by the Trump administration could retroactively invalidate tax credits.
The Solar Energy Manufacturers for America Coalition, a trade group representing non-Chinese companies with U.S. factories such as First Solar (FSLR) and Hanwha's Qcells, has urged the Treasury Department to take a tough stance.
Chinese-linked factories account for ~40% of U.S. manufacturing capacity, according to Reuters, and "very few Chinese manufacturers are actually decoupling themselves from their U.S. factories entirely," according to Wood Mackenzie.
China's JinkoSolar (JKS), which operates a factory in Florida, and the Chinese parent company of Boviet Solar, which makes panels in North Carolina, have said they are looking for outside investors.
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