Solar manufacturer presses Obama administration to investigate China

A major U.S. solar manufacturer is pressing the Obama administration to investigate whether China is illegally subsidizing its solar industry.

SolarWorld Industries America, a solar panel manufacturer, filed petitions Wednesday with the Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission. The company wants the Obama administration to impose duties on Chinese solar imports.

The company alleges that China is flooding the U.S. market with underpriced solar panels and subsidizing its solar industry in violation of World Trade Organization rules. The efforts, the company says, are burdening U.S. solar manufacturers and are partly responsible for seven U.S. companies going out of business or downsizing in the last year.

“The Chinese industry is illegally seizing control of the U.S. solar market and manufacturing and our jobs,” SolarWorld President Gordon Brinser told reporters Wednesday. “Solar technology was invented here and we intend to keep it here."

But the petition is already causing a rift in the solar industry, with power generators and others raising concerns that the petition will drive up the cost of solar panels.

The 3,000-page petition, which has not yet been released publicly, alleges that China subsidizes its raw materials, provides preferential loans to companies and offers discounted land, power and water, among other things, according to Timothy Brightbill, counsel for SolarWorld.

“These subsidies are enormous in size and scope and they are illegal under U.S. law and World Trade Organization law,” Brightbill said Wednesday.

The petition only applies to crystalline silicon solar cells, which SolarWorld produces. It does not apply to thin-film solar panels like the one that the now-bankrupt solar firm Solyndra produced.

The petition won the support of Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee’s International Trade panel.

“We just want a level playing field,” Wyden said Wednesday. “China it seems wants to win by keeping its competition off the field altogether.”

SolarWorld said other solar panel manufacturers are supportive of the petition, but Brightbill declined to name the companies.

“There are a variety of reasons,” Brightbill said when asked why the names of the companies aren’t being disclosed. “I think it’s fair to say some may have some concerns about retaliations from opponents in the industry.”

The companies are part of the Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing, a new organization that SolarWorld announced Wednesday. Brightbill would not name the members of the coalition.

The solar industry is not united around SolarWorld’s efforts. On a conference call earlier Wednesday, a number of solar companies said they objected to the petition.

“The result of that kind of action is really not good,” Arno Harris, CEO of Recurrent Energy, a solar generating company, said on a conference call earlier Wednesday. “It prevents Americans from getting access to low-cost solar panels and low-cost electricity.”

“The best thing we can do is really drive down the cost of solar and the industry has been doing a great job with that.”

Harris questioned the level of support for the SolarWorld petition.

“It looks like it’s just one struggling manufacturer,” he said.

Julie Blunden, vice president of external affairs at SunPower, echoed Harris’s opposition to the petition.

“We think it’s an unfortunate distraction,” she said.