How to Build America’s Energy Abundance

The following content is sponsored by T1 Energy and written by the organization’s Chairman & CEO Dan Barcelo.

Domestic solar manufacturing is a job-creating machine. I don’t have to cite any economics white paper. The proof can be found in our factory outside of Dallas. And the solar modules produced there generate affordable energy and help keep the lights on in our homes and factories.

T1 Energy owns and operates a 5 GW solar module facility in Wilmer, Texas. More than 1,200 people work there. Their job titles — Thermal Process Engineer, Automation Technician, Quality Control Analyst — don’t sound like old assembly-line work because they aren’t. These are skilled, well-paying careers. The facility has a payroll of more than $100 million annually, and that money flows into local businesses, local schools, and local families across the Dallas region.

We are also building a $425 million solar cell fab northeast of Austin. Our entire domestic supply chain from raw material to solar module, including our supply chain partners such as Corning, is expected to support 6,000 jobs across Michigan and Texas.

This is what it looks like to build an energy industry here in the U.S. And the case for doing so goes well beyond jobs. Solar requires silver, aluminum, and glass—supply chains vulnerable to disruptions and trade policy changes. Reshoring those supply chains is a form of strategic autonomy for the U.S. A domestic energy supply that is manufactured on American soil is good for the economy, good for national resilience, and good for the workers who build it.

America has always been an energy nation. In 1859, Edwin Drake drilled a seventy-foot-deep hole in western Pennsylvania and struck oil. It was the world’s first oil well. A few years later, Thomas Edison fired up the world’s first electrical plant in lower Manhattan on Appalachian coal. In the 20th century, western dams turned rivers into gigawatts. Engineers learned to drill in deepwater. Americans smashed atoms. Then, at the turn of the 21st century, fracking unlocked vast reserves of natural gas and rewrote the global energy map again.

Every generation of Americans has found the next energy source and built an industry around it.

Now a new surge in demand is driving the need for our next energy source. Artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, and data centers are driving a surge in electricity demand unlike anything the United States has seen in decades. The grid that powered the 20th century was not built for what the 21st century demands of it. We need more electricity generation, and we need it now.

Enter solar.

Solar is already the engine of energy growth. Since January 2024, about half of all new electrical generation capacity added in the United States has been solar, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data. Globally, the same pattern holds, according to Ember’s Global Electricity Review. Solar’s defining attributes are that it is relatively easy to scale, increasingly affordable, and unlike any previous energy source, it can be manufactured. You don’t drill for it or dig for it. You manufacture it. And we’re building it here on American soil.

This is not a call to replace oil and gas with solar. America needs every form of reliable domestic energy production to meet rising demand and maintain grid stability. Solar can be scaled today: it is the fastest path to the energy abundance Americans want and the economy needs.

Right now, the United States is rebuilding a domestic solar manufacturing base capable of producing leading energy technology in American factories with American workers. That resurgence is real, and it is rooted in communities across the country — particularly in red-leaning states that have been hungry for exactly this kind of industrial investment. We have an incredible, untapped workforce right here in the U.S.

We’re building the factories. T1, and companies like us, are making clear that American energy abundance can and will be manufactured in America.

For 250 years, every generation of Americans has found the next energy source and built an industry around it. Samuel Slater harnessed the Blackstone River. Edwin Drake struck oil in Pennsylvania. Engineers cracked dense rock and unlocked the shale revolution. Now the sun is waiting.

We have done this before. We can do it again.