The U.S.-China Divide in Solar Policy & Deployment

By: Kaden Bosquez

The Bureau of Land Management’s ("BLM") recent cancellation of the programmatic environmental review of Esmeralda 7—a project once envisioned to be North America’s largest utility-scale solar development—is a microcosm of a shift in U.S. energy policy. Not only is it a return to fragmented permitting processes that lengthen deployment timelines and raise costs, but it also slows progress toward national renewable-energy goals and toward meeting the country’s compounding energy demands.

Meanwhile, China continues to surge ahead, adding record solar capacity each year under a unified national strategy that integrates manufacturing, deployment, and financing. The contrast is glaring: as China consolidates its dominance over the global solar industry, the U.S. risks entangling its own energy future in regulatory paralysis and policy reversals.

Formally proposed in late 2023, Esmeralda 7 consisted of seven individual solar projects and accompanying battery energy storage systems ("BESS") planned for federal rangeland in Esmeralda County, Nevada. The project’s environmental review area covered roughly 62,000 acres of BLM-administered land and was projected to produce 6.2 gigawatts of solar power—enough to supply nearly two million homes. While BLM’s NEPA register lists the project as “cancelled,” the Department of the Interior ("DOI") characterized it not as a termination but as giving each of the individual developers “the option to submit individual project proposals to the BLM to more effectively analyze potential impacts.” Without a consolidated permitting framework, each developer must now undertake a separate NEPA process with its own scoping, comment period, and potential litigation—effectively resetting the approval timeline and creating uncertainty for the U.S. supply chain.

Programmatic permits have long been recommended to reduce permitting and deployment timelines by addressing environmental, land-use, and compliance questions collectively under the relevant federal statutes and regulatory rules. They also allow the United States to accelerate energy-project deployment while balancing environmental impacts.

The decision to alter the permitting process for Esmeralda 7 is the latest of many decisions that shift U.S. energy focus away from intermittent renewable sources. While DOI announced emergency efforts to streamline permitting to meet surging electricity demand, the initiative excluded solar or wind energy projects, instead prioritizing oil, natural gas, geothermal, nuclear, and hydropower. Moreover, DOI has reversed or re-examined lower-fee rules for solar and wind rights-of-way and paused new leasing rounds for policy review, while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has terminated grant programs that expanded solar access in low-income communities.

Most notably, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act ("OBBBA"), passed earlier this year, substantially accelerated the phase-out of and narrowed eligibility for clean-energy tax credits. The bill withdrew predictable tax incentives that underpin project financing, reducing the bankability of new wind and solar projects, increasing the cost of capital, and slowing deployment of renewable generation and grid-scale battery storage.

Predictable permitting policies and procedures help signal to banks that renewable energy projects are worthy lending opportunities and to component producers that there is demand for the critical materials used in solar projects. Today, however, regulatory uncertainty and the loss of key tax credits are shrinking renewable energy investment forecasts in the United States, chilling private sector investment at a time of record-high energy demand.

This policy environment stands in sharp contrast to China’s current renewable energy trajectory. Over the past decade, China has treated solar as both an industrial and energy-security priority. The International Energy Agency ("IEA") reports that China accounts for nearly 95% of global wafer and polysilicon production and roughly 80% of the world’s solar-module manufacturing capacity. In 2024 alone, China added approximately 277 GW of new solar power—over 60% of global solar installations that year.

The U.S. solar-manufacturing base remains limited: domestic module output still trails demand, and many components are imported. On the deployment side, the United States installed roughly 50 GW in 2024—an all-time domestic record but still an order of magnitude lower than China’s annual additions. According to the IEA’s Solar PV Global Supply Chains report, Chinese production costs for solar modules remain 30% and 35% lower than those in the United States and Europe respectively, due to economies of scale, lower capital costs, and consistent policy support.

China’s centralized planning integrates manufacturing, deployment, and transmission expansion under a unified industrial strategy. The United States, by contrast, manages its renewable deployment through a patchwork of federal, state, and local authorities. However, when major projects like Esmeralda 7 are cancelled or programmatic reviews abandoned, the inefficiencies of this decentralized approach are exposed, further reducing investor confidence and destabilizing domestic renewable energy permitting and procurement.

This contradiction is especially striking given that U.S. electricity consumption is expected to rise by 2.5% annually over the next decade, driven largely by electrification and the rapid growth of AI data centers. Meeting that demand with clean energy will require consistent, streamlined project review processes, as well as robust manufacturing and deployment incentives. Solar generation in particular has the shortest average permitting timeline among renewable sources. However, programmatic reviews—such as the one originally planned for Esmeralda 7—remain among the few tools capable of aligning environmental compliance with rapid deployment.

While China continues to consolidate its lead in solar through scale, coordination, and industrial policy consistency, the United States faces a bottleneck of permitting complexity and policy reversals that slow its ability to meet domestic demand and compete in the global clean energy market.

If the United States is to meet the call of today, it will need to align its permitting architecture with its industrial policy ambitions. Otherwise, the world’s largest energy consumer will remain a step behind in building the energy systems that will power its future.

This article was written by PECC's Energy and Climate Law Scholar Kaden Bosquez, a law student at Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University. It was originally published on December 22, 2025, in Volume 1, Issue 3 of the R.E.A.C.T. by PECC Newsletter.

Editors: Mercè Martí I Exposito, Frances Gothard, Carington Lowe