Red States Shower Love On Coal-Killing Thin Film Solar Factories

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Oh the irony, it burns — again. With their business-friendly policies, politically conservative US states have become sought-after locations for new factories that churn out EV batteries and other decarbonization technologies. The latest news involves the US solar cell innovator First Solar, which has tapped Alabama and Louisiana to ramp up production of flexible, lightweight, thin film solar modules.

Red States Love Thin Film Solar Technology

First Solar is in the news this week because the firm has just announced the opening of the new Jim Nolan Center for Solar Innovation, an elaborate new thin film R&D center in Lake Township, Ohio. The new facility is named after former First Solar board of directors member James F. Nolan, who is credited with developing the company’s signature cadmium telluride formula.

Buried far down in a First Solar press release announcing the new Jim Nolan Center is a reminder that the company is building two new factories in the politically red states of Alabama and Louisiana, as part of a plan to scale up to a total of 14 gigawatts in capacity for its US operations. The Alabama facility will go online any day now, and the Louisiana facility will follow in 2025.

When renewable energy finally knocks fossil fuels down to a niche position in the US energy landscape, Louisiana and Alabama will deserve much of the credit. Lightweight, flexible thin film solar technology will help keep the cost of solar power ratcheting down, and it can be applied to many surfaces that are unavailable to conventional silicon solar panels.

The challenge for thin film technology was to get the solar conversion efficiency of thin film solar cells up to a commercially competitive level with silicon. Having passed that milestone, First Solar is already looking to new improved iterations in the future. The Jim Nolan Center features an advanced manufacturing setup that will enable First Solar to speed up the lab-to-production cycle for new solar cell platforms, including tandem varieties as well as thin film solar modules.

Investing Public Dollars To Attract Thin Film Solar Factories

CleanTechnica’s Steve Hanley caught up with the Alabama venture back in 2022, when First Solar announced that it selected a site in the northern part of the state to build its fourth US solar module factory.

There being no such thing as a free lunch, public officials in Alabama had to pony up in order to win the First Solar deal. The company was reportedly considering about 100 other locations mainly in the Southeast, according to an article in The Moulton Advertiser dated November 30, 2022.

Advertiser reporter Michael Wetzel notes that the  Alabama deal includes property tax waivers of approximately $2.5 million per year for 20 years, among other incentives. The state’s AIDT industrial development training program is also lending a hand with employee recruitment and training.

Apparently, whoever signed off on the First Solar deal did not get the memo about not engaging with ESG-related ventures. Alabama is one of two dozen states in the US where the governor, the legislature, and/or other state officials have aligned against ESG (environment, social, governance) investing principles.

 The anti-ESG campaign is aimed at protecting fossil energy, among other selected industries. However, public officials in anti-ESG states are not shy about investing millions of taxpayer dollars to attract new manufacturing ventures that aim to put fossil fuel stakeholders out of business. Go figure! Green steel, long duration energy storage systems, electric vehicles, and advanced heat pumps are some of the examples.

Meanwhile, Over In Louisiana…

The new Louisiana factory also illustrates a disconnect between high profile public officials within the same state. First Solar officially broke ground on the $1.1 billion facility in Iberia Parish on September 21 last year, with a hearty welcome from then-Governor and renewable energy fan John Bel Edwards, a Democrat. The project took shape even as former State Attorney General Jeff Landry was making a name for himself among the anti-ESG set. That included signing the state on to a multi-state letter excoriating the high powered investment management firm BlackRock over its decarbonization policy in 2022, and launching an investigation into the Climate Action 100+ business group in 2023 (for the record, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall also signed the BlackRock letter in 2022).

Landry assumed the governor’s office this year and quickly made the most of the opportunity. “Republican Jeff Landry, who has labeled climate change ‘a hoax’, has elevated fossil fuel executives to key environmental posts,” noted The Guardian on February 14.

“Under Republican leadership, Louisiana has joined the red state battle against environmental, social and governance policies,” observed the news organization Bond Buyer on June 20.

Be that as it may, Landry is stuck with the new coal-killing thin film solar factory. Last summer, when Edwards was still in office, the Louisiana Economic Development agency noted that the state invested quite a hefty sum of taxpayer dollars to attract First Solar. “To secure the project in Iberia Parish, the state of Louisiana offered First Solar a competitive incentives package that includes the comprehensive workforce solutions of LED FastStart,” the agency noted.

That was just for starters. “Additional incentives include performance-based grants for site development and infrastructure improvements totaling $30 million,” LED added. Iberia Parish is also chipping in with infrastructure improvements for the site, including water and wastewater systems.

More & Better Solar Cells, Made In The USA

Circling back around to the Jim Nolan Center, it’s noteworthy that Ohio also joined the anti-ESG campaign in 2022, when Attorney General Dave Yost signed the state onto the same BlackRock letter as Louisiana and Alabama. Now the state is celebrating a new facility that will help push fossil energy back underground.

First Solar also plans to deploy the resources at the Jim Nolan Center to develop new tandem solar cells, which deploy two kinds of solar materials to cut costs while boosting solar conversion efficiency. Perovskite is probably in the mix, following the company’s acquisition of the Swedish thin film perovskite specialist Evlolar last year.

“With this acquisition, along with our new innovation center in the United States and longstanding commitment to R&D, we are investing not just in First Solar’s future, but the future of solar energy,” explained Mark Widmar, First Solar CEO, in a press statement marking the Evolar acquisition.

“We anticipate that high efficiency tandem PV modules will define the future, speeding up decarbonization by allowing us to convert sunlight into clean electricity more efficiently,” he emphasized.

With the Republican Party’s now-notorious Project 2025 plan for a second Trump term in office looming overhead, it remains to be seen if Widmar’s optimistic outlook remains in force after Election Day 2024. However, that is up to the voting public.

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Photo (screenshot): First Solar is expanding its plans for a thin film solar revolution in the US, and that is putting conservative politicians in red states on the spot (pictured here, a utility scale solar array in Australia courtesy of First Solar).