WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) issued the following statement following the U.S. Solar Market Insight Report from Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) that section 201 solar tariffs played a role in the decline of utility-scale solar installations in the third quarter:
“The growth of solar energy in North Carolina has created thousands of jobs, generated billions of dollars of investment, and fostered economic development. Since the imposition of tariffs, North Carolina has experienced an exponential decrease in solar investment and projects planned. I have worked to highlight the negative impact tariffs are having on the economic growth provided by our solar industry and have urged the Administration to reconsider the scope of this tariff through the exclusion process. I will continue to advocate for the exclusion of advanced technologies that have the capability to modernize our grid and make the American solar energy industry globally competitive.”
For the first time since 2015, quarterly additions of utility-scale solar photovoltaics (PV) fell below 1 gigawatt (GW), highlighting the impact of the tariffs and the uncertainty surrounding them in late 2017 and early 2018. As a result, the U.S. solar market was down 15 percent year-over-year in the third quarter of the year.
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