South Korea’s Hanwha Group plans to spend $2.5 billion to build solar manufacturing capabilities in Georgia. The Wall Street Journal reports the investment would allow the conglomerate’s Qcells unit to build facilities in the Atlanta region that would produce 3.3 gigawatts of solar panels a year, enough to supply around 18% of the estimated U.S. demand in 2022.
The plan marks the biggest solar investment spurred so far by the massive tax incentives introduced last year. U.S. efforts to scale up clean-energy sources have been hampered by big gaps in the solar sector’s supply chain in North America.
The Qcells operation would solve that by producing on-site nearly all the main components that go into panels, including solar cells, ingots and wafers — items not currently manufactured in the U.S.
