Could Biden’s Clean Energy Push Be a Victim of Its Success?

Dalton, Ga., was once known as the carpet capital of the country. Economic diversification meant branching out from wall-to-wall to hardwood flooring. Now, at Qcells, a solar panel company, robots patrol acres of shop floor where delicate solar cells are packaged, laminated and boxed into sophisticated panels — almost 30,000 a day at peak production — in a highly automated production line.

The company built a massive factory in Georgia — one of the most crucial states in the 2024 presidential election — and has another in the works. Both plants will employ thousands of people, underwritten by President Biden’s signature clean energy initiative, the Inflation Reduction Act.

“Just coming in here, you feel like this is the future,” Wayne Lock, 32, a Qcells quality engineer, said as he walked the production line, which has bustled since Mr. Biden signed the law in August 2022. “We’re advancing and keeping up with the world.”

But rather than bragging, Qcells executives are raising an alarm. The Biden clean energy initiative is bringing plants like theirs on line at breakneck speed. And the rate of production — at home and abroad — has created the prospect of a glutted market that threatens to drive down the price of solar panels as the supply outpaces demand.

Mr. Biden’s political advantage in the clean energy economy could turn into a crippling liability: shutdowns and canceled construction plans rippling across the country, including in key 2024 states like Georgia, Arizona and Colorado.

“We should be very worried,” said Mike Carr, executive director of the Solar Energy Manufacturers for America Coalition, a trade association. “We are very worried.”