It is painfully obvious that this inability deprives these nacent companies of the political clout they need to gain funding from the government in order to help America regain their position as the world's solar energy leader.
As long as this situation continues to exist, China will continue to eagerly purchase, and use, this superior technology at dirt cheap prices to dominate the worldwide solar market.
Chuck Provini, " a good American and a patriot." and a former decorated Marine must leave the United States behind for China who is willing to give him a chance.
His company, Natcore Technology, based in Red Bank, N.J., holds the license to technology that makes solar panels cheaper, more efficient and less toxic to the environment. He said he tried to commercialize the technology domestically, but while bureaucracy and red tape stalled talks with state and federal officials, conversations with Chinese officials sped ahead.
Provini, whose company licenses technology developed at Houston's Rice University, said that for about a year, he went back and forth with representatives at the Ohio Department of Development. He said he also worked with a major Washington, D.C., law firm and was told that a $750,000 application fee was necessary just to apply for a specific federal program.
Officials responsible for developing China's clean and alternative energy program in the Hunan province learned about Natcore through a mutual contact at the University of Wales and placed a call, he said.
Then they flew Provini to China and helped him find a production partner that will provide capital and manufacturing capabilities. In the next three to six months, he said, they could move into the manufacturing phase, which could create 250-400 jobs.
"They've cut through the red tape to be responsive," he said. "It's almost embarrassing that whatever you ask for, they deliver it."
Obama's decision to enact a series of renewable energy tax credits in 2009 will incurage the development of Chinese solar technology.
Also 30 states have renewable energy standards requiring utilities to purchase an increased percentage of power from renewable sources, another stimulus for Chinese industry.
While solar is booming in Asia and Europe , and supported by government with a Feed-In-Tariff (FIT), America is seeing bankruptcies and struggling solar companies on their home field. The blame game is on in America accusing the Chinese for their own failure to invest, innovate and deliver. While China definitely has an advantage on the labor-cost side, it's still the American companies that have the best technologies. This is the good news. The bad news is that some of these American technologies are getting bought by these same Chinese.
The Chinese are dumping solar cells on the world's markets to gain a world wide monopoly.
This strategy has recently driven the American companies Evergreen Solar and Solyndra into bankruptcy. Solar energy manufacturing is now almost dead in America.
Armed with tens of billions in loans from the Chinese government, Chinese solar companies have scaled at a rate unthinkable only a few years ago. At the end of this year, there will likely be 50,000 megawatts (MW) of manufacturing capacity in place around the world, with much of that new capacity being developed in China and other Asian countries. (In the year 2000, there were only 100 MW of production capacity worldwide.)
These billions are "free money" : cheap debt provided by the Chinese Development Bank (CDB). Here's how the CDB works its magic.
The CDB was originally set up as a "policy bank," to operate as an arm of the Chinese central government, doling out public funding to support central government development programs. Now it is a "joint stock company with limited liability" that often reports to China's national cabinet on certain policy issues. This allows the Chinese government to get involved in CDB activities and direct loans toward projects officials want to support.
Much of this money is unrepatriated American capital accumulated by mufti-nationals doing business in China who invest in CDB long term bonds
These funders cannot take that money back out until the term is up, so the bank can make longer-term loans to Chinese companies. CDB also gives borrowers very low interest rates, and, if the borrower cannot pay back the loan, it may be back-stopped by the Chinese government.
This makes it easier, cheaper, and a lot less risky for Chinese solar companies to obtain financing.
In 2010 alone, the bank handed out $30 billion in low-cost loans to the top five manufacturers in the country.This has enabled China's solar producers to grow to GW scale in a very short period of time, turning the country into a leading exporter of solar and pushing down world solar prices dramatically.
From a project development perspective, those steep price drops are a very good thing. But manufacturers trying to make product outside of China and other Asian countries are getting hit hard.
Bryan Ashley, the Chief Marketing Officer for Suniva, an American company that produces high-efficiency solar cells in Georgia, doesn't mince words.
"Free money is impossible to compete with," said Ashley. "Even when global demand went down they were able to keep producing, producing, producing," said Ashley. "And now they're dumping. If something isn't done, there will be no American product left on the market."
But with all the cheap debt that the Chinese government is throwing at domestic companies, Suniva is finding it increasingly tough to stay in the U.S.
"If something isn't done, no one will be making solar PV in the U.S.," said Ashley.
The situation is a difficult one. China's domestic efforts are helping drop the price of solar at an astonishing pace -- something that everyone in the solar industry wants. But it's also making it extraordinarily difficult for American solar manufacturers to compete.
The United States invented the modern solar cell over a half century ago. As China continues to boost domestic solar companies, the American solar industry will be asking some hard questions about how -- and if -- solar manufacturing can ever make it in a big way in the U.S.
methods will push economic viability for solar even further into the future.