Dive Brief:
- Ontario-based Canadian Solar will invest at least $800 million into building a new plant in Jeffersonville, Indiana, the company announced on Monday.
- The facility will have an output of five gigawatts a year, equivalent to approximately 20,000 high-power modules a day. The solar cells will be used in a five GW Canadian Solar module assembly plant in Mesquite, Texas, which is set to begin construction this quarter.
- Production at the Indiana plant is expected to begin by the end of 2025, bringing 1,200 new jobs to the southern Indiana area. The solar company plans to start hiring mid next year.
Dive Insight:
A handful of conditional incentives from the local and state governments helped draw the company to Jeffersonville's River Ridge Commerce Center. The Indiana Economic Development Corporation has offered Canadian Solar approximately $12 million in conditional incentives and grants for the project.
"This is the second of the anticipated long-term investments we expect to make in the U.S. as we think strategically about a local, sustainable and clean energy supply chain and to fulfill the long-term requirements of the local-content rules of the recently established IRA,” Thomas Koerner, senior vice president of Canadian Solar, said in a statement.
In August, the company told investors it would use its Thailand facility to supply the factory in Mesquite, Texas. However, Canadian Solar Chairman, President and CEO Shawn Qu also hinted at plans to build a solar cell factory in the United States.
Indiana falls into the United States’ “battery belt,” which has been a popular destination for clean energy, EV and battery manufacturing investments after the Inflation Reduction Act was announced in 2022. In October, automaker Stellantis and battery maker Samsung SDI chose Kokomo, Indiana, for a $3.2 billion EV battery factory.
Canadian Solar was founded in 2001 and has about two dozen manufacturing facilities around the world.
