Looking to move on from the general atmosphere of doom and gloom surrounding the Department of Commerce’s decision to launch an antidumping investigation into solar panel imports from Chinese companies working in Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) has launched a survey for solar workers, which aims to quantify the damage caused to the industry.
According to SEIA, companies of all sizes that work in any space, from residential to utility-scale projects, can and should complete the survey. This will provide a holistic and qualitative sense of how those working in the solar industry every day expect the anti-circumvention investigation to impact their businesses and workforce.
Alongside the general survey, SEIA is also encouraging developers of larger-scale projects, meaning 1MW and above, to submit project-level data. According to the organization, this data will be valuable to show policymakers detailed and concrete impacts of the anti-circumvention investigation and will require little extra effort from the developer. Since projects under development larger than 1MW are required to submit EIA form 860 annually, with that requirement moving to monthly as they get closer to construction, any delays and cancellations related to the antidumping investigation would already be reported, however EIA doesn’t make the data that it receives public until two or more months after the forms are filed
According to SEIA, the implementation of AD/CV tariffs would result in the loss of 16GW of new solar installations, a figure which represents more than half of what was installed in the US last year. In addition to project delays and cancellations, SEIA estimates that enacted tarifs could put put 70,000 U.S. solar jobs at risk.
