First Solar’s 2026 Corporate Responsibility Report

First Solar published its 2026 Corporate Responsibility Report, reinforcing its conviction that how and where solar technology is made matters. 

The report details how First Solar, America’s leading solar technology and manufacturing company, creates enduring value by developing, sourcing, manufacturing, and recycling solar domestically, supporting jobs and communities, strengthening industrial capacity, and helping ensure the benefits are realized locally.

Key highlights talk about the scale and durability of its genuinely domestic manufacturing footprint, its technology that is responsible by design, the company’s domestic capacity that supports reindustrialization, and its industrial value retention at scale.

“For First Solar, responsibility isn’t something we simply add on,” said Samantha Sloan, executive vice president of Corporate Affairs, First Solar. “Rather, it is embedded in how we operate, built into every stage of how we source, manufacture, and recycle American solar. That is what allows us to build value by creating jobs and industrial capacity while strengthening energy and supply chain security. It is what sets us apart.”

A study commissioned by First Solar and conducted by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, released earlier this year, found First Solar supported nearly 30,000 estimated American jobs and $3.0 billion in labor income in 2025, while contributing an estimated $5.8 billion to US gross domestic product. 

The analysis projects that by 2027, First Solar will support over 39,000 jobs and $4.0 billion in labor income, reflected in paychecks, regional economic growth, and the development of communities where First Solar operates.

First Solar owns its intellectual property and controls its manufacturing processes, giving it the freedom to operate and enabling end-to-end traceability and product security, long-term competitive differentiations that few, if any, competitors can match. Its products are designed to be secure, traceable, recyclable, and reliable over decades of operation. 

Reflecting its conviction that how something is made matters, the company’s advanced thin film manufacturing requires less energy, water, and chemical intensity than conventional crystalline silicon (c-Si) production, including up to 50 times less chemical and gas intensity, as it continues to improve resource efficiency while scaling responsibly.

First Solar exited 2025 with almost 13 gigawatts (GW) of US nameplate capacity, scaling toward approximately 17 GW by 2027. This fully vertically integrated capacity relies on American value chains for raw materials, including glass and steel, anchoring domestic-content capability, supply-chain resilience, and a scale that is difficult to replicate. 

By the end of 2026, First Solar expects to have invested over $5 billion in American manufacturing and research and development (R&D) infrastructure since 2019.

First Solar is the only solar manufacturer with more than 20 years of experience operating global, in-house PV recycling facilities, achieving an average material recovery rate of more than 95% in 2025. 

Its high-value recycling recovers critical materials such as tellurium and returns glass, steel, and aluminum to domestic industrial supply chains, keeping strategic materials in productive use and retaining industrial value at home rather than sending them overseas or to landfill.

Sloan said, “When solar is made this way, the result is tangible. It enables good-paying jobs, revitalized communities, and strategic industries, while delivering the reliable, affordable power that families and businesses depend on. That is the real value of American solar: electricity as a public good, made the right way.”