The U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) recently announced the first of two expected import tariffs on Chinese crystalline solar cell and module manufacturers.  This is the latest blow in a feud that has included local content requirements, two-way accusations of strategic underpricing at different points in the value chain, and political posturing that amounts to a clean-tech trade skirmish.  SolarWorld America and other unnamed U.S.  manufacturers initiated the suit claiming a 49-249% “Alleged Dumping Margin” by leading Chinese solar manufacturers which have gobbled up market share at the peril of many U.S. companies.

Here are the main takeaways: This is mostly a symbolic victory in an election year.  The first announcement was a countervailing duty that ranges from 2.9% to 4.73%, with the verdict of the second anti-dumping case expected in May.  This first duty was significantly lower than the 30% figure that many in the industry were expecting.  Even if the anti-dumping duty brings the total duty up to 20%, don’t expect this to cause a resurgence in U.S.  solar manufacturing anytime soon.  Nor should this have a major impact on the cost of installing solar in the U.S. or elsewhere (unless opportunistic installers conspire to do so and use the duty as an excuse to pad their profit margin).  Chinese companies may just ramp up manufacturing in Taiwan and other countries where they have manufacturing capacity to get around the ruling.

The suit and the DOC ruling have caused an antagonistic rift within the US solar value chain.  On one side you have solar manufacturers, led by SolarWorld America and seven other smaller companies that manufacture solar cells and modules.  These companies, despite receiving many tax incentives from state and federal governments in the United States and elsewhere, have witnessed a margin bloodbath and are fighting for dear life.  On the other side, the drop in cost has led to a doubling of installations for the past two years, leading in turn to a boom for U.S. installers, third-party financiers (think SunRun, SolarCity, et. al), and project developers who have seen tremendous growth during this time.  None other than the pioneer of the solar lease, Jigar Shah, founder of SunEdison and leader of Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy, has been the most visible advocate representing this group.

Meanwhile the polysilicon producers in the U.S. who fared well when prices were high in 2009 are now experiencing a race to the bottom on price.  Chinese polysilicon providers now allege that the American competition is selling at artificially low prices that is wiping out Chinese companies.  Go figure.

It’s true the Chinese government has provided an order of magnitude advantage to solar manufacturers in China, primarily through low-interest loans.  But that was a strategic decision by a country that has to figure out a way to raise standards of living for its 1.3 billion people – and is not concerned about ROI for Western investors, elections, and US jobs.  Plus, note that the leading U.S.  residential marketshare leader, SunPower, is not part of the suit.

For a number of reasons, China holds all the cards on this one – and that means the bottom line is that the country is going to play by its own rules. Western crystalline solar manufacturers’ “enemy” is state capitalism, not Chinese manufacturers, so companies (across all cleantech sectors) need to get used to it.  The United States lacks a coherent, let alone strategic, energy policy ‑ and this is one of the repercussions.

The San Luis Valley in southern Colorado is a place of desolate beauty, roughly the size of New Hampshire, the driest high-elevation area in the United States.  It’s also becoming a proving ground for both wind and solar power projects, some of them of vast scale.  This week the Saguache County Board of Commissioners voted to issue a permit for a sprawling solar power facility that would generate 200 megawatts (MW) – three times the electricity of the three solar plants already existing in the Valley.

The San Luis project, being developed by Santa Monica, Calif.-based SolarReserve, is also noteworthy because it uses concentrating solar technology, which uses arrays of sun-tracking mirrors, known as heliostats, to amplify and focus the sun’s energy onto a fluid – water or molten salt – that is heated to make steam.  Covering 4,000 acres, SolarReserve’s plant will include two 656-foot towers surrounded by 1,700 acres of heliostats.  Although SolarReserve has a contract with Xcel Energy for 100 MW of transmission capacity on a nearby Xcel power line, it has not yet found a buyer for power from the complex.

A technology with potential advantages over conventional, photovoltaic-based solar power, concentrating solar power (CSP) has not yet fulfilled its promise and may be reaching a make-or-break phase in its development.  The San Luis Valley announcement came just as an auction was scheduled to sell off the assets of Maricopa Solar, a pilot CSP project built by Stirling Energy Systems, which went bankrupt last September.  The fact is that CSP, besides being a more potent form of energy collection, presents certain disadvantages as well, the most obvious being that many CSP systems require copious amounts of water to cool the mirrors and lenses – a significant downside in a desert environment like the San Luis Valley or like California’s Mojave Desert, the setting of the 392 MW Ivanpah plant being built by BrightSource Energy.  Dry cooling systems are becoming more prevalent, but are also more expensive.

BrightSource was also in the news this week as it filed for an initial public offering in which it plans to raise $182.5 million. Backed by Google and by power producer NRG Energy, BrightSource is also the recipient of a $1.6 billion loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy – a fact that could become politically inconvenient once it’s a publicly traded company with millions in shareholder cash.  BrightSource already has 13 contracts to sell power to utilities including PG&E Corp. and Edison International.  The IPO is scheduled for mid-April, according to Bloomberg.

Several other companies including Acciona SA of Spain, German tech giant Siemens AG, and ABB Ltd. of Switzerland are trying to bring CSP to market.  Some of these companies recently launched a trade group called the Concentrating Solar Power Alliance to “educate” (i.e., lobby) U.S. regulators and lawmakers on the benefits of CSP technology.  By the time the nascent industry gathers in San Diego for the 4th annual Concentrating Solar Thermal Power conference, on April 18^th and 19^th, the near-term prospects for CSP are likely to be clearer.

Last month in his State of the Union speech, Barack Obama touted the potential of the clean energy sector as a source of rising employment for the United States.

“We should put more Americans to work building clean energy facilities, and give rebates to Americans who make their homes more energy efficient, which supports clean energy jobs,” the President said.

Plenty of controversy exists over how many jobs emerging cleantech businesses actually generate. “Congress is holding the fate of more than 40,000 jobs in the clean energy industry in its hands – right now – as they hem, haw, and delay deciding whether to renew critical energy financing provisions such as the Production Tax Credit (PTC) for onshore wind, the ‘1603’ grants that have created jobs in the solar sector, access to the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for offshore wind projects, and credits for efficient manufacturing, homes, and appliances,” wrote Mary Anne Hitt, director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, on Huffington Post last week.

The maps below shed a bit more light on the relationship between jobs and investments in clean energy. The first is the well-known Renewable Energy Map, created in 2009 by the Natural Resources Defense Council:

The interactive map shows existing and planned (as of 2009) projects in wind, solar, biofuel, and geothermal power (the image above shows only wind power). The number of projects has increased significantly since then, while the relative geographic distribution has changed little.

The second map was created by Richard Florida, of The Atlantic, and his colleagues Charlotta Mellander and Zara Matheson. It shows the projected percentage increase in blue collar jobs in the United States from 2010 to 2020.

I am not suggesting a direct relationship here, and the data is so complex as to be open to various interpretations. (Is the increase foreseen in the Detroit area, for instance, dependent on a continued resurgence of the U.S. automaking industry?) And, of course, renewable energy projects tend to go where the wind, solar, and geothermal resources already exist. There is, though, a rough correspondence: the highest blue-collar job growth will be in a line roughly tracking the Eastern Seaboard south to North Carolina, in specific pockets along Florida’s Atlantic coast, the Gulf Coast, and across Texas, in a few scattered areas in the inter-mountain West, particularly in Arizona (a fascinating development with strong implications for both political parties), and in parts of central and northern California. The overlay with renewable energy projects is intriguing enough to suggest that, if you’re going to be looking for a working class job in the next eight years, you might want to go where the clean energy investment is going.

Our nation’s capital is swirling with hot air about the fate of energy-related jobs, from fossil fuel (the high-profile Keystone XL pipeline) and wind power, specifically the expiration of the federal production tax credit (PTC) for wind and geothermal power facilities.

February 21^st was the deadline established by Republicans in Congress for a decision on the controversial Keystone project, designed to carry oil from tar sands in Alberta, Canada south to the Gulf of Mexico.  Keystone XL proponents frequently tout the American Petroleum Institute’s claim that $7 billion investment in the pipeline will create 20,000 jobs.  According to a study performed by Cornell University’s Global Labor Institute, though, the real American employment numbers are closer to 10% or 20% of that amount: 2,500 to 4,650 jobs.  In official filings with the State Department, pipeline proponents acknowledged that only several hundred of these jobs will be permanent. 

While President Obama has already signaled his lack of support for Keystone, expect plenty of heated rhetoric on the matter, as presidential politics increasingly focus on the role of future energy supplies on job growth in the U.S.

According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the job consequences of the PTC will be much greater.  According to a study performed by Navigant Consulting on behalf of AWEA, as many as 37,000 jobs could be lost over the next four years if the PTC is not extended.  Budget negotiations to extend the payroll tax extension failed to include an extension of the PTC, so chances for a near term extension of this 2.2 cent-per-kilowatt-hour subsidy are looking slimmer and slimmer.  This is at least the 10^th time this federal subsidy has come up for a vote over the past two decades, highlighting the stop-and-go nature of U.S. energy policy, buffeted by ever-shifting political winds.

State Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) are the primary driver of future electricity resources, so the overall renewable sector will still grow, but wind – usually the lowest cost resource – will decline as an overall percentage of the power mix, raising the cost of power for ratepayers.

The wind power industry is actually one of the few success stories when it comes to the “inshoring” of jobs, as the domestic content of wind turbines has been going up, not down, over the past decade. The loss of the PTC would hit an industry already showing signs of a shake-out akin to what’s been happening in the solar space. For example, Vestas of Denmark, the world’s leading wind turbine manufacturer, has already laid off workers overseas and has threatened to also cut jobs in the U.S. if the PTC is not extended.

One solution is to actually develop a long-term energy strategy that would phase out as many subsidies as possible in exchange for some level of support certainty that would decline over time. California tried this approach with solar PV, establishing a 10-year program with declining subsidies known as the California Solar Initiative. Imagine if we did this with all energy sources – including fossil fuels, which have historically enjoyed the largest amount of government subsidies.