The World Trade Organization has decided for the United States in its case to use trade rules to crush India’s nascent solar industry. Climate be damned, national sovereignty be damned, trade rules come first. Protecting multinational corporations is the highest priority to the U.S. government Saving the planet from catastrophic climate change is not. India had been successfully implementing plans to shift rapidly from dirty climate killing coal to clean solar by building a domestic solar panel production industry, but the U.S. trade representative, working in the interests of multinational corporations, will not allow it.
India's power system, predominantly fueled by coal, is notoriously unreliable, but solar power is coming to the rescue. Locally generated rooftop and industrial scale solar is empowering communities across India while reducing pollution and creating local jobs. But the U.S. trade office took offense that India had buy local provisions to protect their investments in developing their domestic solar power industry and filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO found against India’s buy local provision to provide a reliable market for India's nascent solar power panel production industry. Ironically, the big winner in this case is China, the lowest cost producer of solar panels, not the United States. Moreover, buy local provisions have been used by U.S. states to build up local industries. This case could ultimately be turned against businesses in the United States that benefit from buy local rules if China went to the WTO fight for its manufacturers.
U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman was positively giddy about his successful effort to stifle growing competition in the developing world that might challenge the dominance of large multinational corporations in the energy industry.
"Today, the WTO panel agreed with the United States that India's 'localization' measures discriminate against US manufacturers and are against WTO rules," Froman said. The US and India "are strong supporters of the multilateral, rules-based trading system and take our WTO obligations seriously," he said. "This is an important outcome, not just as it applies to this case, but for the message it sends to other countries considering discriminatory 'localization' policies." "The United States strongly supports the rapid deployment of solar energy around the world - including in India," Froman said. "But discriminatory policies in the clean energy space in fact undermine our efforts to promote clean energy by requiring the use of more expensive and less efficient equipment, raising the cost of generating clean energy and making it more difficult for clean energy sources to be competitive," he said. The US had challenged the Government of India's imposition of domestic content requirements for solar cells and modules under India's National Solar Mission. Read more at: http://www.oneindia.com/international/wto-rules-against-india-on-us-solar-exports-2023454.htmlThis case directly shows how trade agreements can and will be used to undermine the Paris agreement on climate change, national environmental legislation and national sovereignty. The world’s largest players in the global energy business are using trade rules to crush competition and our USTR Mr. Froman is leading the charge to smash start ups around the world. Distributed generation and homegrown solar power are a threat to the-powers-that-be. New “trade” agreements such as TPP are protectionism for the world’s largest corporations from the threat of democracy.
On the heels of the recent global summit in Paris to tackle climate disruption, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has ruled against an important piece of the climate solution puzzle: India’s ambitious program to create homegrown solar energy. The ruling shows that decades-old, over-reaching trade rules are out of sync with the global challenge to transition to 100 percent clean energy.
In just five years, thanks to India’s National Solar Mission, India has gone from having virtually no solar capacity to boasting one of the world’s fastest-growing solar industries. In just the last year, a parade of leading solar companies has announced plans to establish new factories in India to produce solar cells, the parts of solar panels that use sunlight to produce electricity. India has named the solar program as a core component of its contribution to the Paris agreement to tackle climate change.
But today, the WTO released its ruling against India’s National Solar Mission, deciding that India’s efforts to boost local production of solar cells violated WTO rules. Though India argued that the program helps the country to meet its climate commitments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the WTO rejected that argument. Indeed, the ruling boldly states that domestic policies seen as violating WTO rules cannot be justified on the basis that they fulfill UNFCCC or other international climate commitments. In effect, the WTO has officially asserted that antiquated trade rules trump climate imperatives.
To understand the importance of this case, you must first understand the progress the Indian government has made in deploying solar energy. In the five years since India announced its national solar program, the country has grown its solar capacity from nearly nothing to commissioning nearly 5,000 megawatts,as a result of government subsidies and long-term contracts. As we’ve noted before, this solar expansion has been timely, as the troubled Indian coal industry has been unable to expand to meet power demand. The program aims to reduce the cost of solar energy and achieve 100,000 megawatts of solar power capacity by 2022 – more than the current solar capacity of the world’s top five solar-producing countries combined.
India also plans to use the solar program to establish “a leadership role in low-cost, high quality solar manufacturing.” In January 2015, President Obama seemed to indicate support for that goal. After a visit with Indian Prime Minister Modi, the two leaders released a statement "emphasizing the critical importance of expanding clean energy research, development, manufacturing and deployment, which increases energy access and reduces greenhouse gas emissions." Their statement even declared, "the US intends to support India’s [solar power] goal by enhancing cooperation on clean energy and climate change.”
Of course, the U.S. had no intention of letting India develop its own solar industry, despite the president’s fine words. Under the mantra of free trade the U.S. used the WTO to club to India’s infant home-grown solar industry to death before it could threaten multinational corporations.
As the Sierra Club points out this decision also threatens home grown solar in the U.S.
Bringing this case is a perverse move for the United States. Nearly half of U.S. states have renewable energy programs that, like India’s solar program, include “buy-local” rules that create local, green jobs and bring new solar entrepreneurs to the economy. The U.S. government should drop this case to avoid undermining jobs and climate protections not just in India, but also at home.
Call your representative or use this Sierra club link to tell your representative to vote no on the TPP.
image caption credit: http://thelogicalindian.com/news/puducherry-school-becomes-first-school-in-country-to-become-fully-solar-powered/