Governors' Wind Energy Coalition

A group of utilities and renewable energy developers wrote to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on Thursday, urging her agency to reject a petition to expand solar tariffs on China to four Southeast Asian nations..

Reminder: California-based Auxin petitioned Commerce last month, arguing that solar cells and modules imported from Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam nearly always originate in China, and should be covered by tariffs that hit imports from the world’s second largest economy.

But the utilities and independent developers, represented by the group American Clean Power, argue that doing so would have a “chilling effect” on solar deployment and affect more than 80 percent of the large-scale projects planned this year. They want Raimondo to dismiss the petition without even opening an inquiry, writing that even the “threat of an investigation” is causing “significant disruption in domestic solar deployment and imperiling the Biden-Harris Administration’s climate goals.” The agency must decide next week whether to open the tariff probe.