Solar Manufacturing Accelerates In Texas, Trump Or No Trump

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Oh the irony, it burns. Despite the red hot rhetoric of right wing politicians, some US states are neck deep in the renewable energy revolution. A case in point is the deep red state of Texas, which has been growing its solar manufacturing profile even as state lawmakers try to obstruct the energy transition. Among the news makers is Freyr Battery, which disappointed clean tech fans just a few weeks ago when it ditched plans for a $2.6 billion battery factory in Georgia.

Georgia’s Loss is A Solar Manufacturing Win For Texas

The demise of the battery plant was bad news for Georgia, but not necessarily for Freyr. Last year the Norwegian firm began laying plans to acquire a forthcoming 5-gigawatt solar manufacturing facility in Texas. Plans for the new factory were launched under the wing of Trina Solar in 2024. The company soon had a change of heart and turned the project over to Freyr.

“FREYR is still targeting a start of construction in Q2 2025 with anticipated first solar cell production in H2 2026,” the company explained in a press release in December.

“The creation of a U.S.-owned and operated company that can provide a turnkey solar technology solution is expected to solve a bottleneck for developers, create up to 1,800 direct jobs, satisfy local content requirements for U.S. solar projects, and competitively differentiate FREYR,” the company explained.

Following through on the Trina Solar plans, Freyer rebranded itself into “T1 Energy” this year and moved its headquarters to Austin, Texas. As T1 Energy, the company reportedly closed the Trina Solar deal last week to the tune of $850 million.

$265 Million More For Solar Manufacturing For Texas

The new factory will be located in Rockdale, Texas, and if you caught that thing about manufacturing solar cells, that is a big deal. Although the US is catching up on the module side of the solar manufacturing equation, the country is still far behind on solar cell production.

T1 will face some competition for its new solar cell venture. One salvo is coming from the San Antonio solar maker Mission Solar Energy, a US offshoot of the leading Korean conglomerate OCI. On March 20, Mission announced a new investment of  $265 million to bump up the size of its existing campus in San Antonio. The expansion will add another 2 gigawatts to the facility’s production capacity once completed in 2026, while enabling it to combine both solar cell and solar module fabrication in the same space.

That’s a big jump up for Mission, which launched its solar manufacturing venture at just 300 megawatts, later bumping its solar output up to 1 gigawatt with an assist from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

“Producing solar cells in-house increases domestic content in Mission Solar Energy’s products, providing customers with reliable, American-made solar solutions,” Mission notes. The company will source polysilicon from another branch of its parent company, OCI TerraSus, which deploys hydropower to raise the green profile of its production facility in Malaysia.

The new expansion indicates that Mission sees a strong, competitive field for solar manufacturing in the US, regardless of the draw-down in federal support under the Trump administration — even in Texas, where lawmakers in Texas have made a routine out of bashing renewable energy. They can blow all the hot air they want, but wind and solar energy have been economic powerhouses in their home state.

Texas continues to top all other states for installed wind capacity, a position it has held since early 2000’s. Texas is also challenging California for installed solar capacity as well.

More Solar Manufacturing For Texas

The fresh burst of activity in Texas’s solar manufacturing profile is significant because the state only had 14 or so manufacturers to its credit as recently as 2023, mostly clustered in the racking business and other associated hardware. Mission Solar held the title of Texas’s lone solar module maker until that year, when the leading Indian firm Waaree Energies announced that its new 5-gigawatt solar shop will be located in Brookshire, Texas.

In 2023 the Texas-based firm SEG Solar also announced its intention to expand its footprint with an assist from the Inflation Reduction Act. True to its word, last August the company commenced operations at its 2-gigawatt solar module plant in Houston.

Look Out, Trump: Here Comes A New $3 Billion Renewable Energy Fund

The dictator-adjacent Commander-in-Chief who occupies the White House raked in millions of donations from his supporters in the US fossil energy business. Nevertheless, the investor momentum is building globally on the side of clean tech. Trina Solar’s brief stay in Texas, for example was partly financed by the global financial firm Standard Chartered, and Standard Chartered is on the move.

On January 14, the firm joined with the leading sustainable investing platform Apollo Clean Transition Capital to set up a new energy transition fund of up to $3 billion USD. The partners will deploy the Apterra global infrastructure financing platform, which is under the wing of ACT Capital’s parent company Apollo Asset Management. As part of the arrangement, Standard Chartered has also acquired a minority stake in Apterra.

Apollo Asset Management has already racked up more than $40 billion USD in energy transition investments over the past five years. The new arrangement with Standard Chartered builds on existing collaborations between the two firms. In a press statement, Apollo Asset Management Co-President Jim Zelter emphasized that further scale-up is coming:

“The global industrial renaissance is creating unprecedented capital demands across next-gen infrastructure, sustainable power and other transition assets. This new agreement should accelerate our mutual financing and investment activity in these areas.”

“Standard Chartered and Apollo have complementary origination and distribution capabilities, which increase the scale of the financing we can jointly deploy, and the size of the projects in which we can participate,” added Standard Chartered Group Chief Executive Bill Winters.

The Apterra platform has also been busy since its launch just two years ago. The platform already has more than $4.8 billion USD in transactions under its belt, and positioned to increase its already “robust growth trajectory” as described by Standard Chartered.

Next Steps For Solar Manufacturing In The USA

Whether or not any of those investor dollars help bump up the solar manufacturing profile in the US remains to be seen. The American electorate skipped the opportunity to vote for continuity on federal energy policy last November, choosing instead to boost a self-dealing grifter, convicted felon, and credibly accused rapist into the White House.

Pro tip: Next time, don’t vote for the convicted felon.

As part of the fallout from the election results, on March 21 the self-dealing grifter, convicted felon, and credibly accused rapist in the White House pulled another leg out from under the US solar manufacturing stool. According to news reports he included solar modules in the list of items no longer receiving federal support through the Defense Production Act.

Meanwhile, though, the new round of activity in Texas indicates that investors have confidence in the US solar manufacturing sector regardless of federal energy policy. They have a strong foundation to build on, too. By the time former President Joe Biden peacefully turned over the reins of federal power to somebody else on January 20, the US was already surpassing Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and other leading nations in solar panel production. Solar cells are the next goal post, so hold on to your hats…

Photo: Solar manufacturers continue to maintain confidence in the US solar market, regardless of the anti-renewable hot air blown by state and federal policy makers (via CleanTechnica archive).