Bloomberg Markets - 08.2019 - 09.2019

Chase is head of solar analysis at BloombergNEF in Zurich. Sage is a

product manager for oil and shipping at Bloomberg in New York.

into the U.S. Last year the figure had dropped to $31 million a
month on average, and China accounted for only 11% of total
U.S. imports.
The total dollar amount of U.S. solar imports has decreased
in the past few years, mainly because the price of solar cells and
modules fell faster than installed volumes rose. The average price
of a watt (a unit of output) of solar module imported to the U.S.
halved from about 53¢ in 2015 to 26¢ in 2018. That excludes tariffs,
which are not reported in the import data.

IN A SURPRISE CHANGE on June 12, the Office of the U.S. Trade
Representative announced that modules with a special bifacial
design that captures light on both sides of the panel would be
exempt from tariffs, provided they don’t come from China. This
will speed up factory retooling for bifacial technology adoption in
the factories of Southeast Asia and increase U.S. solar imports
from these countries.
Solar factories in Malaysia and Vietnam have already ben-
efited from the trade tariffs. Malaysia’s share of the U.S. market
rose to 32% this year, from 27% in 2017. Similarly, Vietnam’s portion
increased to 28%, from 15%.
U.S.-based First Solar Inc., the only company making
cadmium telluride technology, has factories in both Malaysia and
Vietnam. So the Tempe, Ariz.-headquartered company, whose
modules are not covered under the measures the U.S. has put in

place to discourage imports, is contributing to the trend of rising

imports from the two Southeast Asian countries.

Many major Chinese companies, such as Longi Green Energy

Technology, JinkoSolar Holding, Trina Solar, and Zhejiang Chint

Electrics (which sells under the brand names Chint and Astronergy),

have factories in these two countries.

CHINA’S SOLAR INDUSTRY, meanwhile, powers along. Total exports

from mainland solar factories have suffered little from the U.S.

trade tariffs, according to Chinese customs data collected by data

provider Sinoimex. The U.S. is no longer among the top 20 markets

for Chinese solar exports (FIG. 2). Fast-growing solar industries in

India, the Netherlands, South Korea, Ukraine, and other countries

are more important to Chinese solar companies such as JinkoSolar,

Trina Solar, and Wuxi Suntech Power.

BloombergNEF now tracks solar markets in 121 countries.

By comparison, a decade ago only a handful of nations had signif-

icant policies driving solar build-out. The change is mainly a reflec-

tion of solar’s increasing competitiveness with fossil fuels, creating

unsubsidized demand for solar modules and encouraging govern-

ments and utilities to include solar in their plans for future

power generation.

Fig. 2

Client Turnover

Chinese solar panel exports, by largest markets

Source: BloombergNEF

2018

Japan

$3.8b

2015

$13.9b

India

Netherlands$1.0b $1.4b

Other

$0.6b

U.S.

U.S.

$1.8b

Four years ago, the

U.S. accounted

for 12.7% of China’s

panel exports. ...

... By 2018, its share

had fallen to 0.4%.

$13.6b

Japan

$1.8b

Australia

$1.3b

Mexico

$1.2b

India

$2.2b

Although Japan

remains a top-five

player, its imports

from China have

been cut in half.

Brazil

$0.6b

Other

$1.0b

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