T1 Energy CEO Dan Barcelo, speaking at a Breitbart News event on Wednesday, highlighted China’s dominance in global solar manufacturing and said the United States should aim to surpass it by expanding domestic capacity and supply chains.
As America’s energy needs grow — driven by AI and data centers — solar offers distinct advantages, Barcelo said: “It is the fastest to market right now,” has “one of the lowest costs of development,” and once on the grid, “it’s zero marginal cost.”
Barcelo pointed to the overwhelming gap between the United States and China in solar production, calling for a far more ambitious national effort. When asked about Elon Musk’s recent comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos — where Musk envisioned his companies producing 100 gigawatts of solar capacity per year — Barcelo acknowledged the importance of that scale, but asserted it still falls short of what’s needed if the U.S. is to catch up with China.
“America capacity is just over 50 gigawatts. China kicks our butt there. They’re easily over 1000 gigawatts of capacity. And I think what Elon is doing is great. It’s grand. Some could actually say, if you look at it from the Chinese perspective, it’s actually small. America should be double those size.”
While noting T1 Energy does not manufacture semiconductors, Barcelo emphasized the overlapping importance of materials and supply chains. “The other part of the solar industry, particularly the polysilicon-based solar industry, is that polysilicon is a critical component, also for semiconductors,” he explained. “We have to get polysilicon chains here. We have to get the whole chain because it doesn’t only support the solar industry. It supports the semiconductor industry, too.”
Barcelo provided a progress update on T1’s solar manufacturing projects in Texas. “We’re building a solar cell fab in Milam County in Rockdale. It’s the site of an old Coast melter that has started construction. We expect that production will start by the end of this year. That site will be 2.1 gigawatts of capacity to feed into our five gigawatt site in Dallas,” he outlined. “The inputs to that will then come from Michigan. That will come from Corning. Corning will be selling us the wafers, so we’ll be able to close that entire chain of American poly, American wafer, American cell.”
He tied the urgency of solar expansion to grid resilience during extreme weather events. “I think the real strategy is, how do we get all of the energy that we can get as fast as possible, and deploy it in the areas that make the most sense, again, as fast as possible,” Barcelo said. “Yes, natural gas played a critical role in the Texas grid as it should, as foundational for America. However, by having natural gas, you know, taking control there, we’re also not exporting the natural gas. You know, in some ways, the more we build storage into the grid, the battery storage, the more we build solar into the grid. It’s only allowing us to export LNG.”
He connected solar to national manufacturing revitalization. “With solar, this is really connecting to bringing manufacturing back,” Barcelo remarked. “You don’t have to make the solar where the oil and gas field is. You can make the solar anywhere you can put the manufacturing plant. You need the automation. You need the robotics. You need the humans. But it’s a very important part, and I think it’s an important part of the mix for the grid.”
Barcelo framed the moment as part of a broader effort to reclaim U.S. leadership in energy. “America was not the number one oil producer in the world. It was Saudi. America is now. America was not the number one gas producer. That was Russia. America is now. There’s no reason that China is also the number one solar producer now. They don’t have to be. America one day can do that.”
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