For many consumers, installing rooftop solar panels that generate enough excess energy to sell back to the grid for a profit seems like a win-win. Lower electricity bills, cleaner energy: everyone wins. Well, almost everyone. Unfortunately, many solar panels imported into the United States are the product of slave labor in China. This contradiction underscores a moral crisis in our country’s green energy strategy – one that compromises human rights in the pursuit of environmental goals.

The most important material for manufacturing solar panels is polysilicon. It’s as essential to solar power as crude oil is to gasoline. Basically, polysilicon is made into tube-shaped ingots, sliced, and then made into individual cells that fill a solar panel. While the United States has sufficient capacity to produce solar panels, China accounts for 95% of global production of polysilicon, ingots and wafers.

The link between polycrystalline silicon and human rights violations may not be immediately clear, but the reality is shocking: 45% of global supply of this material used to power green energy in America is produced by slave labor in Xinjiang, China, with an additional 30% coming from elsewhere in China. If you’re unfamiliar with Xinjiang, know that it is home to approximately 11 million Uyghurs, a predominantly Turkic-speaking Muslim ethnic group. Over the past decade, the Chinese government has detained over 2 million Uyghurs and subjected them to sterilization, imprisonment and slave labor. The American government officially labeled this campaign as a “genocide”.

All polysilicon manufacturers in Xinjiang engages in or benefits from slave labor. The remaining supply from China is likely mixed. Even if this were not the case, it would be impossible to prove otherwise.

Multiple legislative efforts have been made to address the supply chain problem. The best known is the Inflation Reduction Act, which provides billions of dollars in tax incentives to produce renewable energy. In the solar industry, the main incentives concern the construction of modules and panels. Since the enactment of the IRA there has been a massive increase of module capacity in the United States. The trade-off is that this capacity cannot currently be provided by national suppliers alone.

As of 2021, it is illegal to import goods made with Uyghur slave labor in the United States, and anything from Xinjiang is presumed by law to be contaminated. To circumvent US sanctions, Chinese polysilicon and wafer manufacturers launder their products through third countries such as Malaysia, South Korea and India before shipping wafers to the United States to be made into modules. .

To name just a few: the Indian Waaree Energies “has sent millions of signs in the United States with components from Chinese company Longi Green Energy Technology, whose products have been repeatedly denied entry into the U.S. market due to concerns over forced labor. Canadian Solar, a Chinese company headquartered in Canada with major projects in Texas, recently opened a new facility in Xinjiang, supervised by CCP officials, no less. South Korean company Hanwha QCells was recently exposed for significant exposure to forced labor. Each of these companies will claim hundreds of millions of dollars in IRA tax credits.

Of these, QCells is the most problematic. The White House and Harris campaign are touting its expansion into Dalton, Georgia, a swing state, to sell IRA benefits. Additionally, last July, QCells became the official preferred solar supplier for the US government, giving it a lucrative inside track on its competitors. Furthermore, in August, the Ministry of Energy awarded QCells $1.45 billion loan guarantee. Together, these actions make QCells an extremely safe bet for investors.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The United States was recently one of the world’s largest producers of solar-grade polysilicon. That was until the incentive structure pointed toward higher profits and more refined polysilicon used in computer chips. U.S. producers couldn’t compete with the flood of cheap Chinese polysilicon, weakened by virtually nonexistent labor costs.

One of the goals of the IRA was to create a national supply chain for green energy. While well-intentioned, a focus on power generation capacity has not provided sufficient incentive for upstream parts of the supply chain, such as polysilicon, ingots and wafers, to incentivize states -United to wean ourselves from their dependence on slave labor.

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Environmental activists fear that eliminating cheap Chinese imports will hamper our green energy goals and tend to bury their heads in the sand on the issue. It is a cynical and depressing reflection of our polarized political environment that views everything as a zero-sum game. If we have to rely on slave labor to save the planet, who are we saving it for?

It’s time to reorient IRA incentives to ensure we build a truly ethical green energy economy. Millions of Uyghurs are suffering to meet global demand, and every time we put up signs, we become complicit in their oppression. If we are to strive for a sustainable future, it must be rooted in moral clarity. The challenge is not insurmountable, but it requires leaders to prioritize environmental sustainability and human dignity.

Yeonmi Park is a North Korean defector, speaker and best-selling author of To live And While there’s time left. Follow on X: @YeonmiParkNK