Japan

After Japan announced a generous feed-in-tariff (FIT), Japan has become one of the hottest new PV markets in the world. Like all significant PV markets where there is also domestic manufacturing, the issue of protecting that fragile manufacturing base in a hostile solar market is bound to come up. The U.S. and Europe have to take on competing countries head-on by proposing – or implementing, in the U.S. – import tariffs on Chinese cells and/or modules and China is retaliating. Rumors from manufacturers in Taiwan suggest that Japan will announce more stringent efficiency standards on imported modules: reportedly increasing minimum monocrystalline (c-Si) module efficiencies to 18.2%, and multicrystalline (mc-Si) to 17.4%. Other examples of indirectly incentivizing domestic content are present – for example, wind projects in Brazil can only access low-cost financing from state banks if they contain 60% domestic content.