Work on a sprawling solar park in Kenosha County’s town of Paris is on hold as federal investigators try to determine whether solar panels purchased for the project were made with forced labor.
The $400 million Paris Solar-Battery Park was initially supposed to be completed and in service by this May, but no solar panels have been installed on the 1,500-acre project site. The target for completion has been pushed to the end of the year.
That’s because the panels needed to finish the project are sitting in a Chicago-area warehouse, waiting for a review from U.S. Customs and Border Protection to ensure they were not made with forced labor from China, according to Dan Krueger, executive vice president of infrastructure and generation planning for WEC Energy Group.
WEC Energy Group’s two Wisconsin utilities, We Energies and Wisconsin Public Service, will own 90 percent of the Paris project while Madison Gas & Electric would own the remaining 10 percent. The 200-megawatt solar project will produce enough power for around 60,000 homes, as well as provide 110 megawatts of battery storage.
But the Paris Solar-Battery Park isn’t the only Wisconsin project facing delays from concerns around forced labor in China. So too is the second phase of the Badger Hollow Solar Park in Iowa County, another joint venture between the two WEC utilities and Madison Gas & Electric.
President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, or UFLPA, in December 2021. The law bans importing goods that were manufactured using forced labor in China, specifically the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
Krueger said WEC Energy Group is "fully supportive" of the review by federal authorities. He said U.S. Customs and Border Protection has released about one-third of the panels for the second phase of the Badger Hollow Project, but the utilities are still waiting on the rest.
"We remain confident that we have full traceability, that these panels fully comply with UFLPA and we are awaiting verification and clearance from U.S. Customs," Krueger said. "I believe their hands are full, so we don't have any dates at this time from them."
Other utility-scale solar projects around the country have faced similar delays due to the ban, according to Reuters. U.S. Customs and Border Protection detained 1,000 panel shipments by November 2022, but that figure rose to an estimated 1,400 as of early March 2023, Reuters reported.
Outside the energy sector, a Wisconsin Watch investigation published in May found evidence that a supplier for Milwaukee Tool may have used forced labor from Chinese prisoners to make work gloves bearing the Brookfield-based company’s name. While a company spokesperson told Wisconsin Watch that Milwaukee Tool found "no evidence" to support those claims, the allegations have spurred a Congressional investigation and caused Walmart, America’s largest retailer, to pull the gloves from its online marketplace.
Source: wpr.org
Photo Credit: pexels-pixabay
Categories: Wisconsin, Energy