SEIA has an ambitious goal – solar energy will constitute 20% of all U.S. electricity generation by 2030. To reach this target, the massive growth the solar industry realized over the last decade will need to continue for the next decade. We will need to grow our industry an average rate of 18% annually and install more than 500 gigawatts (“GW”) of solar projects by the end of 2030, including approximately 77 GW in 2030 alone. Achieving this goal will result in hundreds of thousands of new U.S. jobs, more than 14 million solar rooftops, and 500 million metric tons of avoided CO2 emissions. And although our industry has been slowed by the global pandemic, we still expect to meet the 20% by 2030 target. 

To date, however, while the broader U.S. solar industry has and will continue to flourish, U.S. solar manufacturing has languished. It is time to seize the promise of American solar manufacturing. Consistent with the Solar+ Decade Roadmap’s focus on aggressive collaboration, we must also ensure that the United States becomes a world leader in not only solar equipment but all renewable energy technologies, particularly including onshore and offshore wind and energy storage. In parallel with SEIA’s goal of 20% solar energy by 2030, we are setting an additional Solar+ Decade target: 

100 gigawatts of annual renewable energy manufacturing production capacity by the end of the Solar+ Decade.

This 100 GW target is designed to increase the United States’ ability to supply not only domestic renewable energy projects but also export markets. The target also recognizes the benefits of an integrated global supply chain and an important role for imports. It is not intended to isolate U.S. renewable energy industries from the rest of the world, and we continue to recognize that tariffs are ineffective at incentivizing domestic manufacturing. In addition, the target takes into consideration the different growth potential and development stages for solar, wind, and energy storage manufacturing, with onshore wind being the most established to date.