If you work in the solar PV industry you may be aware that the US government recently implemented a range of “Anti-Dumping Tariff’s” on solar PV imports from China. The reason they say is that the Chinese government have subsidised the production of Solar PV Equipment in order to dominate the market and drive western manufacturers out of business. China have responded by saying they do not unfairly subsidise the market and that these tariffs are unjustified.
The cost of solar panels has reduced drastically in the last few years and helped fuel the solar boom, reduce installation costs and even aid the reduction of feed in tariffs in the UK. However if the cost is artificially reduced by China is this necessarily a bad thing?
We all know China has emerged as a manufacturing power house, however they were (a few years ago) lagging behind the USA and Europe (Germany in particular) in terms of Solar PV manufacturing. Since then they have managed to leapfrog both the US and Germany as the leading provider of Solar Panels in the world.
It is claimed that many of the manufacturers have been subsidised in terms of free land on which to build factories and also lax regulation of recycling and disposal of waste products.
Essentially it is clear that the Chinese government clearly understands the importance of solar PV in the future of the world’s energy mix. They have chosen to support their industry and help it grow whilst other governments have maybe not seen the opportunity on the horizon.
Ultimately this has led to lower costs which has helped grow the market in western countries and also helped support jobs for installers as the lower costs has made it much more viable for people to install solar. So is this such a bad thing?
At the end of the day we are all heading for the same goal, less dependence on fossil fuels and less pollution in the environment. However if the manufacturing process in China is creating toxic pollutants then this could be a major issue.
Since the Anti-Dumping Tariffs were introduced China has already taken steps to side step them by sourcing some components for their panels from Taiwan. In fact recent figures show that the US solar PV market has continued to boom in the face of these tariffs and in fact the cost of panels has even fallen slightly since the announcement was made.
However a similar group of companies will be lobbying the EU parliament for a similar Anti-Dumping tariff to apply to EU imports from China. We will wait to see the outcome of this and if it will have an impact on the UK and European markets.