Will Biden’s green jobs policies help him win votes?

The former “Carpet Capital of the World” is undergoing a multi-billion dollar transformation.

Here in the rural Georgian town of Dalton, once known for its textile floor coverings, Korean company Qcells is spending $2.5 billion (£2 billion) to expand its solar panel factory, with another under construction.

It’s a bold initiative that will create 2,500 high-quality jobs over the next 12 months in an area where the median household income is about 27 percent lower than the national average. We hope the project will revitalize a corner of the United States that seemed to have passed its prime.

And a large part of that is thanks to someone who many residents of this Republican Party district would not want to give credit to – Joe Biden.

The president’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 – his flagship green law – offered hundreds of billions of dollars in tax incentives, credits and loans to boost America’s clean energy production.

The most ambitious climate legislation in U.S. history has unleashed a tsunami of private-sector investment with big implications for the rest of the world. And Georgia — a state President Biden is hoping to weigh in this year’s presidential election — has been a big beneficiary.

But four months before the president’s direct confrontation with Donald Trump, billions of dollars in new investments in this key, fragile state appear to have done little to boost support for the incumbent president.

President Biden says tackling the climate crisis is also good for jobs. Since the law was passed, more than 300,000 clean energy jobs have been created in the U.S., according to the advocacy group Climate Power.

And there’s no doubt that’s creating opportunities in places like Dalton. Here, you can see Bidenomics in action—foreign and government money being used to fight climate change and build the economy from the inside out.

Scott Moskowitz, Qcells’ head of market strategy, says Georgia has been a great home since 2019, but the IRA has been an “accelerating factor.” Without it, he wonders, the current expansion might not have happened at all.

“Since the passage of the IRA, our industry has seen greater investment in solar and clean energy production in the last two years than in the previous 20 years,” he says.

Yet this message is either not getting through or is simply not resonating with residents – even local Democrats.

Jan Pourquoi, a spokesman for the local Whitfield County Democratic Party, told me, “There is resentment in the business community towards this company (Qcells).”

Mr. Pourquoi, a Belgian emigrant, should know this. He owns one of the small carpet manufacturing companies in the city. We talked in his office, overlooking the production hall, where they turn leftover floors into small rugs.

“The business community is outraged that a South Korean company is coming into the area with government subsidies when they are not getting anything from the government,” said Mr. Pourquoi, who identified as a Republican before switching parties after Mr. Trump was elected in 2016.

He tells me that local voters know little about the IRA bill. “Nobody cares about clean energy, not here. That’s the kind of thing that I would call ‘latte liberals’ in the big city care about.”

Well, at least one person does, and that’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, the district’s fiery Republican congressional representative. She praised Qcells’ expansion even though she voted against the bill that helped make it possible.

This creates an awkward dynamic for Republicans. The IRA is in Donald Trump’s crosshairs.

If Republican lawmakers win a big victory in the November 5 congressional elections, parts of the climate bill signed by President Biden could be repealed, threatening the clean energy boom in their communities across the United States.

I sat down for coffee with Kasey Carpenter, Dalton’s Republican in the Georgia House of Representatives. We met at Oakwood Café, a bustling restaurant he owns, and at a number of other local businesses, including a pizzeria and a boutique hotel.

Mr. Carpenter downplayed the potential impact on Qcells of the phase-out of manufacturing tax credits. He doesn’t think it will threaten solar investment in his district.

But he added that if clean energy investments were at risk, “I’m sure we’d talk to the Trump team.”

Our conversation ends with the observation that it would be another feather in Dalton’s cap if this carpet city could also claim the title of “solar panel capital of the world.”

But that belongs to China, which controls 80% of the global solar panel supply chain.

According to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), China has been investing heavily in renewable energy for years and is expected to spend a staggering $675 billion in 2024.

To compete, governments around the world have begun pouring hundreds of billions into the green industries of the future.

In the EU, clean energy investment is expected to grow to USD 370 billion in 2024, according to the IEA. The expected amount for the USA is USD 315 billion.

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said last year she hoped increased U.S. spending on renewable energy would help address the “significant disruption” to the global economy caused by China.

The goal is also to prevent China from further opening up the U.S. renewable energy market.

And those huge green investments are being directed by the Biden White House, very deliberately, to so-called red states — those that tend to vote Republican. The hope is to create a manufacturing boom before the November presidential election.

For those who work at the Qcells factory, this opportunity has been life-changing.

Robots patrol the production floor where solar cells are packaged into panels. There I meet Alan Rodriguez, wearing a black Qcells polo shirt.

He swapped a job at a carpet factory in Dalton for Qcells shortly after the solar panel maker opened its first plant in 2019. Rodriguez started in an entry-level position before gaining advanced skills and working his way up to an engineering position.

When he worked in the flooring industry, he never expected to progress so quickly.

“It was great for me,” Rodriguez says as he walks down the production line. “The work is much better, the environment is much better. It’s a clean facility.”

President Biden is counting on people like Alan Rodriguez to help him turn red states in November.