[Solar: Taoyuan in Taiwan Province issues local guidelines for solar projects]

Toyo Co. has rejected AASMT’s anti-circumvention allegations over its Ethiopian operations, calling the petition misleading and inaccurate. AASMT alleged that Toyo and Origin Solar were processing Chinese-origin wafers into cells in Ethiopia for US exports, bypassing existing AD/CVD duties. Toyo said its Ethiopian cells use polysilicon sourced only from the US and Malaysia, with wafers processed in non-China countries, making the supply route compliant with current trade rules. Its Ethiopia facility reached full 4GW capacity in October 2025 and is now fully utilized. SMM believes tighter US trade scrutiny will increase compliance disclosure requirements across solar supply chains.

Romania’s Environmental Fund Administration may not run the Casa Verde rooftop solar grant program this year, after the scheme was also suspended last year. The program previously covered up to 90% of household PV system costs, but local reports suggest it may be transformed into a battery storage grant scheme for prosumers, of which Romania now has more than 250,000. RPIA said a proposed EUR 76 million budget in 2026 is expected to support hybrid PV-plus-storage systems for residential and C&I users, mainly targeting existing PV prosumers. SMM believes Romania’s policy focus is shifting from pure solar capacity expansion toward higher self-consumption, grid flexibility and distributed system resilience, with storage becoming a key driver for continued rooftop PV growth.

Japan awarded 1.25GW of battery storage capacity across 19 projects in its latest Long-Term Decarbonization Auction, including 551MW of lithium-ion battery storage and 699MW of non-lithium battery storage. OCCTO awarded a total of 7.3GW of derated capacity across 32 projects, with 4.26GW going to decarbonization-source projects and 3.04GW to LNG-fired thermal generation. Although new rules excluded storage projects with durations below six hours and introduced stricter battery procurement and cybersecurity requirements, awarded battery storage capacity only fell slightly from 1.37GW in the previous round.