BP Closes Another Solar Manufacturing Plant

Ironcally, development shows how far photovoltaics has come, despite British Petroleum

1 min read

BP has announced it is closing its solar manufacturing operations in Frederick, Maryland, north of Washington, D.C. The striking thing about the news is that it's a mere local story, with the focus on the 320 workers who lose their jobs. The national press has ignored it, as have the specialized news sites and blogs that specialize in solar energy and green tech. 

BP acquired the Frederick plant in 1998 when it bought Amoco. A mere dozen years ago, believe it or not, that little factory was the largest or one of the largest photovoltaics manufacturing operations in the world. BP's acquisition of it seems to have partly or even largely inspired the company's decision to start styling itself as the world's largest solar manufacturer, to adopt an image of the sun as its corporate logo, and to launch a high-profile ad campaign in which it said it was moving "beyond petroleum." A mere two years later, as Spectrum pointed out a while back, it ditched production of the next-generation thin-film photovoltaic panels it had been developing, abandoning a key effort to finally make solar cells widely affordable--and raising doubts as to whether it would be moving beyond petroleum any time soon. Today, BP is not high on the list of the world's top photovoltaics makers.

BP will continue to employ about 100 people in research, sales and project development in Frederick, but the main foci of its solar development efforts are joint ventures in Bangalore, India, and Xian, China. Generally it has got out of producing PV materials, leaving that to subcontractors, and concentrates on integrating and selling systems.

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