Two years after the signing of the CHIPS and Science Act, we’re seeing the start of an unintended benefit.
Published on August 12, 2024 by Aaron Brickman, Ben Feshbach
On August 9, 2022, the US federal government enacted the CHIPS and Science Act, which allocates $52 billion toward revitalizing domestic semiconductor manufacturing. The impact of this investment on US manufacturing may extend beyond just microchips.
Leveraging data from the newly released Clean Growth Tool, a free resource built by RMI and the Brookings Institution, we find that – in much the same way that semiconductors helped feed the Silicon Valley software revolution — the semiconductor manufacturing projects enabled by the CHIPS and Science Act could eventually bolster American solar competitiveness.
The Clean Growth Tool calculates the feasibility of different clean energy industries for different US regions by noting that if two industries historically concentrate in the same places, these industries must require similar local capabilities. That’s what we’re seeing with recent manufacturing investment in solar and semiconductors: projects are clustering in many common places.
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