How Georgia's Gop Learned To Love Solar

CARTERSVILLE, Georgia — The solar industry is converting Republican politicians one factory at a time.

President Donald Trump has called solar power “the scam of the century” in his effort to roll back the Biden climate agenda, and brought most of his party along with him — at least in Washington.

But here in Bartow County, where Trump earned three-quarters of the vote in 2024, local Republicans are the most fervent boosters of the nearly mile-long factory opened in June by Hanwha Qcells.

Years after the U.S. forfeited the global solar supply chain to China, the company's Cartersville factory is making all major components of solar panels — the ingots, wafers, cells and modules.

It is a first in a hopeful domestic manufacturing boom fueled at least in part by federal subsidies — manufacturing tax credits and others that drove sales — that were at the heart of the Biden administration’s industrial agenda. Despite Trump’s anti-solar rhetoric, manufacturers also got a boost from his trade policies: Qcells in 2019 opened its first Georgia plant in Dalton as a response to tariffs during the president’s first term, which raised prices on Chinese imports.

After Qcells’ $2.3 billion Cartersville buildout, the question now is whether the initial wave of solar construction will become merely a ripple if Congress doesn’t restore subsidies Republicans killed or shrank last year in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Some in the solar industry believe incentives may no longer be necessary, noting the continued surge of renewables despite Trump’s antagonism. But solar manufacturers — and some of their political allies — aren’t so confident.

“We didn't deliver what they built this based on,” said Republican state Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, who represents Bartow County. “It is going to slow down future plants being built here, and that certainly concerns me.”

For local Republicans, the embrace of solar is not about fighting climate change as Democrats touted during the Biden administration. In this conservative part of a very purple state, they’ve embraced a different part of the Biden sales pitch: Qcells’ nearly 2,000 factory jobs in Cartersville alone.

Republican state Rep. Matthew Gambill is honest — if Qcells hadn't settled in his district, he wouldn’t care about solar energy. Last year, he led a coalition of state lawmakers in unsuccessfully lobbying GOP members of Congress to retain the federal consumer solar subsidies and a bonus for electricity produced by panels with American-made components.

“I'm not necessarily a champion for solar. I'm a champion for workforce development and investment and jobs that they have created here,” Gambill said. “I do have a responsibility to be aware of the pressure points that they have and the things that cause disruption in their business.”

The solar industry craves that type of dispassionate calculus. It believes it has a compelling story: Solar has led new power installations for five straight years, will help plug the nation’s rising electricity gap and combat consumers’ cost concerns.

Now, they just need to attract more Republicans, a task that will only get more difficult if the roll out of factories stalls.

“We're really committed to depoliticizing in whatever way we can,” said Scott Moskowitz, vice president of market strategy and public affairs with Qcells. “It's a work in progress.”

‘They don’t own the sun’

Work has begun on the Qcells factory floor.

Autonomous carts glide past each other in synchrony, handing 1,000 wafers at a time to yellow robotic arms that feed the hardware into steel-and-glass machines as engineers and quality control inspectors mill about. Conveyor belts shepherd the wafers — hard chips of crystallized silicon — along to become cells, their blue gradient changing with light. Another autonomous cart transports the cells through doors where machines test, cleave and package them onto panels. A final yellow robotic arm applies the frame, ending the nearly mile long journey.

Landing Qcells, a subsidiary of South Korean company Hanwha, was a big deal for Cartersville. It brought engineers and good-paying jobs to a community with roots in the flooring industry. Mayor Matt Santini said residents used to ask, “Where are the jobs?” Now, employers like Qcells ask, “Where are the people?” He prefers that problem.

The charming downtown about 45 miles northwest of Atlanta is studded with American colonial brick buildings. Boutiques with names like Whiskey and Grace, coffee shops where college students sip espressos and the Cartersville School of Ballet share the streets with businesses like Pawn-N-Shop, flanked by images of two handguns. The restaurant Ate Track, where a sign above the bar printed on standard 8.5-by-11 inch paper reads “ATTENTION ALL DEMOCRATS: WE DO REQUIRE DRINKING I.D.”

Cartersville is every bit a slice of purple state politics. Tucked in the back of a store, a procession of people in their early 30s to mid-50s meet for Come Hell or High Water’s weekly beer club, where craft beers from Michigan, Vermont and elsewhere flow from the taps. The opinions on solar are just as varied. Many want more of it. Others fret about up-front costs. Some don’t trust it to power an energy-intensive economy.

In D.C., Republicans have waged a war on solar to deliver on Trump’s campaign promise to end what he called the “green new scam.” They’ve argued that switching to solar benefits China because the vast majority of the panels and components are made there. Last year, that resulted in the demise of the 30 percent consumer tax rebate for solar installation costs, a 0.3-cent per kilowatt-hour credit for electricity production and bonus for U.S.-made content, the latter being a key incentive for U.S. producers like Qcells.

Hufstetler said what he sees locally is different: There is no Republican energy or Democrat energy — just give people better service at lower prices. He pointed to what should have been a wake-up call last year. In a race defined by rising energy costs, two Democrats defeated Republican incumbents for seats on the Georgia utility regulatory commission.

“A lot in my party were out of step with the people,” he said.

Pat Wilson, who has run the Georgia Department of Economic Development under Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and played a central role in cementing the Qcells investment, agreed that attitudes in the state are different than in Washington.

“I do think D.C. has missed the mark on understanding what people are talking about on the ground level,” he said.

The most common refrain in Cartersville is anything that makes life more affordable is popular, period. Even three-time Trump voters like Darla McAfee, 71, said that should include restoring consumer subsidies.

“Why am I paying someone else? They don’t own the sun,” McAfee said. She’s witnessed people trading in goods at the pawn shop she partially owns just to pay monthly utilities. “We’re living in a time where society needs a little help. Everything has gotten so high.”

Tim Pawlenty, the new president of trade group Solar Energy Industries Association, said his organization is doubling down on outreach to conservatives, noting the $48 billion of announced investments and 75,000 jobs in the pipeline. The former Republican Minnesota governor said that strategy includes connecting the existence of a domestic solar supply chain to local jobs.

“Republican support is something we need to work on,” he said.

Uncertain future

There are more bright spots than just Qcells. First Solar, a Phoenix-based manufacturer, has announced billions of dollars worth of manufacturing investment across Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama and Ohio. It is one of several companies, which also includes Texas-based T1 Energy, that form the new American vanguard of solar manufacturing to serve the growing market.

But the U.S. supply chain for polysilicon — the key raw material for most solar panels — would need to dramatically expand to achieve domestic self-sufficiency as Trump’s tariffs tighten the screws on foreign inputs. That will take years and billions of dollars of investment in complex upstream manufacturing to compete with Chinese dominance, said Elissa Pierce, an analyst with research firm Wood Mackenzie.

Qcells gets its polysilicon from a Korean supplier. It canceled a supply agreement with Lake Moses, Washington-based polysilicon manufacturer REC Silicon when that company failed quality control tests. REC Silicon last year shuttered polysilicon production at that facility.

That makes the picture beyond 2030 less certain. By then, all the projects that were grandfathered in for expiring credits will have been built. Manufacturing subsidies that Republicans preserved also begin phasing down in 2030 before ending in 2033. At the same time, the backlog holding up natural gas turbine manufacturers will have cleared. Utilities may elect to let coal-fired power plants limp along.

Where demand for U.S. solar goes in that and other scenarios is murkier. And while not a priority for Republicans, slower solar deployment hinders the nation’s fight against climate change. Wood Mackenzie forecast flat solar additions over the next five years despite growing U.S. power needs, citing uncertainty of a “post-tax-credit world.”

Moskowitz believes Trump’s trade policies like price floors and tariffs announced in August can help buoy the industry. But Qcells originally envisioned there would also be consumer subsidies and a bonus tax credit for U.S.-made parts in place. Moskowitz noted factories won’t thrive without consistent demand.

He hasn’t written off the possibility that those incentives return. “Policy is always evolving,” Moskowitz said.

The U.S. manufacturing industry hit Capitol Hill in June, hoping to resuscitate subsidies by hitching a ride on must-pass, year-end legislation. Democratic wins in the midterms could also put solar subsidies back in play.

The Solar Energy Manufacturers for America Coalition refers to the incentives as the third leg of the stool that props up new U.S. factories.

“If they didn't have an incentive to buy domestic, then they might not because they would buy the cheap foreign supply,” Yogin Kothari, the group’s chief strategy officer said of project developers. “Why would we want to lose billions of dollars of investments and tens of thousands of jobs in communities across the country?”

That’s an argument that did not sway Republicans last year, even with factories planned for red districts around the country.

Nearly three dozen House Republicans voiced support for clean energy subsidies, but still voted to axe solar deployment incentives.

The jobs actually becoming available in towns with manufacturing facilities could make that political calculus more difficult.

Qcells’ factories in Cartersville and Dalton put 36 members of the Millwright Local 1263 union to work setting up the factories’ heavy equipment, said Robert Strickland, the chief operating officer of the Southern Regional Council of Carpenters.

Strickland blamed social media for polluting the conversation about solar. It’s untrue to say buying solar solely benefits China when Strickland’s members logged 30,000 hours on those two factories and countless more installing panels on homes around Georgia, he said.

“We'll probably battle that for 40 years to come, and there's past politicians that made that perception a reality,” he said. “Getting them back to the states and bringing attention to them is important.”