First Solar Inc. won’t be building the world’s largest solar plant in China after more than four years of negotiations on pricing failed to produce an agreement.
First Solar had planned to build the 2,000-megawatt Ordos project in Inner Mongolia and sell the output to China’s power grid. Terms for selling the power were never agreed to, said Steve Krum, a spokesman for Tempe, Arizona-based First Solar.
“Due to the market environment, we aren’t going to pursue the Ordos project further,” Krum said today in an interview. The plant was never included in the company’s pipeline of contracted projects, he said.
Ordos was First Solar’s first foray into China, the world’s largest producer of both solar panels and greenhouse gases. First Solar agreed to build the project and consider opening a manufacturing plant in the region in a memorandum of understanding with Chinese officials on Sept. 8, 2009.
First Solar rose 13 percent the day the plan was announced. The shares fell 0.5 percent to $63.38 at 12:29 p.m. today in New York.
