The Solar+ Decade & American Renewable Energy Manufacturing
SEIA has an ambitious goal – solar energy will constitute 30% of all U.S. electricity generation by 2030. To reach this target, the massive growth the solar industry realized over the last decade will need to continue for the next decade. Annual solar installations must increase by 60% above current forecasts between 2022 – 2030. Achieving this goal will result in hundreds of thousands of new U.S. jobs and 700 million metric tons of avoided CO2 emissions. And although our industry has been slowed by the global pandemic, we still expect to meet the 30% by 2030 target.
To date, however, while the broader U.S. solar industry has and will continue to flourish, U.S. solar manufacturing has languished. It is time to seize the promise of American solar manufacturing. Consistent with the Solar+ Decade Roadmap’s focus on aggressive collaboration, we must also ensure that the United States becomes a world leader in not only solar equipment but all renewable energy technologies, particularly including onshore and offshore wind and energy storage. In parallel with SEIA’s goal of 30% solar energy by 2030, we are setting an additional Solar+ Decade target:
100 gigawatts of annual renewable energy manufacturing production capacity by the end of the Solar+ Decade, including 50 GW of solar manufacturing production capacity.
This 100 GW target is designed to increase the United States’ ability to supply not only domestic renewable energy projects but also export markets. The target also recognizes the benefits of an integrated global supply chain and an important role for imports. It is not intended to isolate U.S. renewable energy industries from the rest of the world, and we continue to recognize that tariffs are ineffective at incentivizing domestic manufacturing. In addition, the target takes into consideration the different growth potential and development stages for solar, wind, and energy storage manufacturing, with onshore wind being the most established to date.
