US government will loan $1.45 billion to help a South Korean firm build a solar plant in Georgia [View all]
Source: ABC News/AP
August 8, 2024, 8:01 AM
ATLANTA -- The federal government is making its first loan to a crystalline silicon solar plant, loaning $1.45 billion to support a South Korean company's bid to build up key parts of the solar supply chain inside the United States.
The loan from the U.S. Energy Department, announced Thursday, will be key to funding a $2.2 billion complex that Qcells, a unit of South Korea’s Hanwha Group, is building. The company plans to take polysilicon refined in Washington state and make ingots, wafers and solar cells — the building blocks of finished solar modules — in Cartersville, Georgia, northwest of Atlanta.
President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, besides offering a extra tax credit on American-made solar equipment, lets manufacturers earn incentives for every unit of polysilicon they refine and every wafer, cell and module they make.
“This loan is special, because it’s one of the first facilities where we’re not just making modules, but we’re making cells and wafers as well," Jigar Shah, director of the Energy Department's loan programs, said in a telephone interview Wednesday with The Associated Press. "So we’re bringing a lot more of the supply chain into the United States.”
Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/us-government-loan-145-billion-south-korean-firm-112673057
Link to U.S. Department of Energy Loan Programs Office ANNOUNCEMENT - LPO Announces Conditional Commitment to Qcells to Finance a Solar Manufacturing Facility in Georgia
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