Tempe-based First Solar building a $1.1B manufacturing plant in Alabama
Alabama will soon welcome an Arizona green manufacturer that will invest more than $1.1 billion bringing a facility to the state.
Tempe-headquartered First Solar Inc. (Nasdaq: FSLR) plans to establish a photovoltaic (PV) solar module manufacturing facility in Lawrence County, creating more than 700 new jobs in North Alabama. According to a release, the factory is part of the company’s previously announced investment in scaling its American manufacturing footprint to more than 10 gigawatts by 2025.
First Solar CEO Mark Widmar first announced in August that the company would spend $1 billion to build a new factory, its fourth, somewhere in the Southeast, but the company would not say at the time which states it was considering.
Widmar said at that time that recently passed federal legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, encouraged the company to make such a big investment. The Inflation Reduction Act is a wide-ranging new set of laws that includes $369 billion for climate and energy provisions and incentives for companies to build in the U.S.
The fully vertically integrated facility in Lawrence County, Alabama’s Mallard Fox West Industrial Complex has a planned annual capacity of 3.5 gigawatts.
The Alabama facility is expected to advance a strategic push by the company to scale its U.S. manufacturing base in support of the effort to decarbonize the American economy and achieve self-sufficiency in reliable and competitive renewable energy technologies.
“This facility, along with its sister factories in Ohio, will form part of the industrial foundation that helps ensure this transition is powered by American innovation and ingenuity,” Widmar said. “Our commitment to responsible solar includes operating facilities that are among the cleanest, safest and most diverse in the country, and we’re pleased to bring our model of responsible solar manufacturing to Alabama. We are proud of the role that this facility will play in creating stable, good-paying manufacturing jobs in the state, demonstrating the economic and social value that clean energy can deliver.”
This latest project is expected to bring the company’s total investment in American manufacturing to more than $4 billion.