Mỹ có thể sản xuất tấm pin mặt trời không? Công ty này nghĩ là được.

mỹ cũng chia 2 phe: 1/ thà nhập tấm năng lượng mặt trời rẻ ở china cho rồi, còn nhanh chóng chuyển sang năng lượng tái tạo, 2/ không thể phụ thuộc vào china về công nghệ quan trọng như này được...

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For more than two decades (hơn hai thập kỷ), workers at a factory in Perrysburg, Ohio, near Toledo, have been making something that other businesses stopped producing in the United States long ago: solar panels (tấm pin mặt trời).

How the company that owns the factory, First Solar, managed to hang on when most solar panel manufacturing left the United States for China is critical to understanding the viability (khả năng tồn tại) of President Biden’s efforts to establish a large domestic green energy industry (ngành năng lượng xanh trong nước).

Mr. Biden and Democrats in Congress last year authorized hundreds of billions of dollars in federal incentives (khuyến khích liên bang) for manufacturing solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, electric cars and semiconductors. The efforts amount to one of the most expansive uses of industrial policy ever attempted in the United States.

...First Solar survived the shift of most manufacturing to China in part because its panels do not use polysilicon (silicon đa tinh thể), a material found in most panels and now made almost entirely (sản xuất gần như hoàn toàn) in China.

Some analysts (nhà phân tích) warn that efforts to make solar panels in the United States are misguided (sai lầm). Even in the best of times, the business yields modest profits (mang lại lợi nhuận khiêm tốn) and does not employ a lot of people. It would be better to import panels from low-cost producers to quickly shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy, said Jenny Chase, a solar analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

“Solar panels would have been cheaper,” Ms. Chase said, if policymakers did not insist on domestic manufacturing.

But many lawmakers and corporate executives insist that the United States should make solar panels. They contend that it would be unwise for the country and allies (đồng minh) like the European Union and Japan to remain dependent on China for such an important technology. Supply chain chaos (sự hỗn loạn của chuỗi cung ứng) during the pandemic, and the growing economic hostility (thù địch kinh tế) between Beijing and Washington, highlighted the huge risks.

...First Solar, which benefited from investments by Walmart’s founding Walton family, survived in part by quickly scrapping plans to expand production.