How the US Lost the Solar Power Race To China (bloomberg.com) 110
An anonymous reader shares a report: Washington blames China's dominance of the solar industry on what are routinely dubbed "unfair trade practices." But that's just a comforting myth. China's edge doesn't come from a conspiratorial plot hatched by an authoritarian government. It hasn't been driven by state-owned manufacturers, subsidized loans to factories, tariffs on imported modules or theft of foreign technological expertise. Instead, it's come from private businesses convinced of a bright future, investing aggressively and luring global talent to a booming industry â" exactly the entrepreneurial mix that made the US an industrial powerhouse.
The fall of America as a solar superpower is a tragedy of errors where myopic corporate leadership, timid financing, oligopolistic complacency and policy chaos allowed the US and Europe to neglect their own clean-tech industries. That left a yawning gap that was filled by Chinese start-ups, sprouting like saplings in a forest clearing. If rich democracies are playing to win the clean technology revolution, they need to learn the lessons of what went wrong, rather than just comfort themselves with fairy tales.
To understand what happened, I visited two places: Hemlock, Michigan, a tiny community of 1,408 people that used to produce about one-quarter of the world's PV-grade polysilicon, and Leshan, China, which is now home to some of the world's biggest polysilicon factories. The similarities and differences between the towns tell the story of how the US won the 20th century's technological battle -- and how it risks losing its way in the decades ahead.
[...] Meanwhile, the core questions are often almost impossible to answer. Is Tongwei's cheap electricity from a state-owned utility a form of government subsidy? What about Hemlock's tax credits protecting it from high power prices? Chinese businesses can often get cheap land in industrial parks, something that's often considered a subsidy. But does zoning US land for industrial usage count as a subsidy too? Most countries have tax credits for research and development and compete to lower their corporate tax rates to encourage investment. The factor that determines whether such initiatives are considered statist industrial policy (bad), or building a business-friendly environment (good), is usually whether they're being done by a foreign government, or our own.
The fall of America as a solar superpower is a tragedy of errors where myopic corporate leadership, timid financing, oligopolistic complacency and policy chaos allowed the US and Europe to neglect their own clean-tech industries. That left a yawning gap that was filled by Chinese start-ups, sprouting like saplings in a forest clearing. If rich democracies are playing to win the clean technology revolution, they need to learn the lessons of what went wrong, rather than just comfort themselves with fairy tales.
To understand what happened, I visited two places: Hemlock, Michigan, a tiny community of 1,408 people that used to produce about one-quarter of the world's PV-grade polysilicon, and Leshan, China, which is now home to some of the world's biggest polysilicon factories. The similarities and differences between the towns tell the story of how the US won the 20th century's technological battle -- and how it risks losing its way in the decades ahead.
[...] Meanwhile, the core questions are often almost impossible to answer. Is Tongwei's cheap electricity from a state-owned utility a form of government subsidy? What about Hemlock's tax credits protecting it from high power prices? Chinese businesses can often get cheap land in industrial parks, something that's often considered a subsidy. But does zoning US land for industrial usage count as a subsidy too? Most countries have tax credits for research and development and compete to lower their corporate tax rates to encourage investment. The factor that determines whether such initiatives are considered statist industrial policy (bad), or building a business-friendly environment (good), is usually whether they're being done by a foreign government, or our own.
I don't buy it (Score:1, Troll)
Re:I don't buy it (Score:4)
The point was that the U.S. was also subsidizing its solar power industry, but there, it was called "tax break", "zoning laws" or "promoting the industry". But some reasons, the U.S. did not get the same grass roots entrepreneurship out of their subsidies than China got.
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Are you suggesting the US government should force American workers to work for free?
It wouldn't be the first time, or the last. You still get some labor out of convicts "paying their debt to society". What they get paid doesn't really count.
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We do not throw people in jail for belonging to the wrong religion.
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Only the wrong race right?
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But some reasons, the U.S. did not get the same grass roots entrepreneurship out of their subsidies than China got.
The reasons, are that there is resistance in the USA. We argue and fight each other over everything.
There is no such resistance in China. The Party makes the plan, and industry follows the plan. The people are educated and trained to fit the roles needed by industry to follow the plan.
A benevolent dictatorship is always the most effective method of getting results. Problems arise when it is not so benevolent. You may remember Tiananmen Square? or the "One Child" program? or the current "tang ping" movem
Re: I don't buy it (Score:2)
Re:I don't buy it (Score:5, Insightful)
> The point was that the U.S. was also subsidizing its solar power industry
China has dramatically [weforum.org] outspent the US in subsidies.
But you know what they don't have in China? An entire industry including major media networks dedicated to convincing people renewable energy is wrong for them. Maybe US businesses would have been more enthusiastic about solar if they weren't being lied to about every aspect of it on a near continual basis.
=Smidge=
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China has dramatically outspent the US in subsidies.
You shouldn't forget that Chinese companies are selling panel modules for less than cost. https://www.reuters.com/busine... [reuters.com]
with some module-only manufacturers taking orders at negative margins to preserve market share
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Re:I don't buy it (Score:4, Informative)
I worked in the industry on the polysilicon end, but not Hemlock. The Chinese had an industrial policy that PV was a "must win" technology and everything from cheap loans to cut rate power went into it. There was also the industrial espionage and they even paid for some technology (the Yukon granular polysilicon plant).
Along the way there was also the 57% tariff to make sure even the oldest polysilicon plants could stay in business, and if they needed to dump contaminated silicon tetrachloride somewhere, they did. You can do a lot when industrial policy comes with that sort of backing.
So in a fine example of ruthless mercantilism they took over the market. And they are doing the same with EVs while "Joe Biden" blocks every new copper mine and environmentalists wring their hands over a patch of buckwheat that sits over a lithium deposit and block that too.
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When the Chinese government says they have a plan to boost a certain industry, entrepreneurs have the confidence to go all in on it. It's not like the government will change to the exact opposite policy in a couple of years due to an election.
Obviously we want to stay democratic, but we could do better. Look at Germany, while far from perfect they do at least stick to industrial policy long term with things like transitioning their energy sector.
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As I said, far from perfect, but they have managed to get industry to invest in it by creating certainty.
Anyway, do you have a better idea for how we can compete?
Re: I don't buy it (Score:1)
And they as a result have more expensive and dirtier energy than the US and even compared to when they started. China has not invested massively in green energy, they invested in energy, period, as a percentage they are not creating the energy they require any more from solar than either the US or Germany. Basically they invested in TW worth of coal and gas and then dangle the few MW in effective production as a prize to the useful idiots.
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LOL at you thinking it's the same thing. Also food service companies don't make solar panels.
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Slave labor is probably more bullshit than reality. But China's government did subsidize the industry because they wanted to move on to greener energy. That's why they are constantly installing more than 50% solar panels, etc. It's simply because no one out there could manufacture at the size needed. It's the same with steel and concrete, etc. No one could manufacture what was needed, so they produced it themselves, and sell just about 10% of whatever is the left over overseas. The market for these pr
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Not commenting on this story specifically, but over the last few years I've come to realize that Forbes has become nothing but a click-bait bullshit factory.
It's far from what it was a decade or two ago. I wouldn't trust anything they publish now. I don't know if Bloomberg is any better or not. I'd probably turn to Matt Ferrell's Youtube channel for it. He did this one on China's rapid growth in renewables about 8 months ago: China's Massive Desert Project [youtube.com]
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From the article you linked:
But cheaper labor makes a big difference as well. Goldman Sachs, in a report, emphasized lower capital costs from “cheaper labour” were a key factor in China’s ability to lower costs, and the Chinese government admits that it operates “surplus labor” programs relocating millions of people from their homes in Xinjiang. It simply denies that it uses coercion in such relocations.
So the Chinese government provides job relocation assistant programs, just like this one [ca.gov], and many other programs [wikipedia.org] that help the poor workers and the American media can immediately spin it as "forced labor" and "slavery". Maybe Americans should check out their forced labor and slavery program of 1.2m (the largest in the world) strong [aclu.org].
No, the government, media, and people in the US are not ignorant. They are just trying to attack their current main geopolitical arch rivals using in [responsibl...ecraft.org]
Hey hey, ho ho, stupid chants have got to go! (Score:3)
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This is some of the craziest mental gymnastics I've ever seen on Slashdot.
Re:Hey hey, ho ho, stupid chants have got to go! (Score:4, Insightful)
The issue is that Americans tend to wait for the tipping point, while the Chinese make it happen.
They drove the price down with mass production and efficient supply chains, and created the market.
Same thing is happening with EVs. With the exception of Tesla most manufacturers outside China are waiting and seeing what happens, waiting for that tipping point. Chinese manufacturers decided to just get ahead early and are already dominating. They didn't wait for the tech to reach 1000 miles range and 10 second charge time, they pushed ahead.
Europe only did a little better in that regard. We do have a lot more EV models and chargers than the US, but still nothing like China.
Same with wind turbines and many other things.
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They drove the price down with mass production and efficient supply chains, and created the market.
They drove the price down with SLAVE LABOR [reuters.com] and subsidies for the purpose of enabling DUMPING [reuters.com]. They sold panels to the west below cost.
Well... (Score:2)
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US/EU based cannot externalize the pollution (Score:1, Troll)
Chinese businesses can often get cheap land in industrial parks, something that's often considered a subsidy. But does zoning US land for industrial usage count as a subsidy too?
That's quite a dance you are doing to attempt to manufacture a false level playing field. Cheap land in industrial parks and zoning are two different things. Zoning is one way you get land set aside for industrial parks. It's not about the cost. Cost has to do with location. And in China it has to do with how much you can contaminate the local region. US and EU basically export the pollution of manufacturing, and raw material acquisition, and energy (coal is still heavily used in China, new plants still bui
Re:US/EU based cannot externalize the pollution (Score:4)
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I agree zoning is not a subsidy. But there are government subsidized industrial parks all over the United States. Most states have explicit programs to attract industry. It's just plain silly to suggest the United States isn't subsidizing industry, including solar panel assembly plants.
Good thing no one is saying that. What is being said is the subsidies and support and protection in China is far greater. A professor in college had toured the iPhone manufacturing complex in China. During the conversation the manager said that the government wanted them to win the contract so they promised to build them the factory at no cost to the company.
The simple reality is that "American" companies took the capital created here and invested it in China.
That happened too. Here China's practice of letting the companies externalize the pollution comes into play.
So new plants in China, aging plants in US.
Aging buildings perhaps. Many of those plan
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What is being said is the subsidies and support and protection in China is far greater
So subsidies and support are fine as long as they aren't any larger than the United States subsidies? Aside from the question of why we get to set the appropriate levels, I think if we thought that was the only problem we would simply match their subsidies.
That is a consumer choice.
No, its Nike's choice. But you missed the point which is that the way to make big money in United States is not by making stuff, its by selling it. We stopped making stuff and now we don't know how. American companies are mostly run by people trained in f
Race? (Score:2)
Race? (Score:3)
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Your win-win philosophy isn't wrong but it's not whole picture.
Once the technology was developed, green energy is cheap energy: That means cheap manufacturing. That's beneficial to the biggest war-machine and most-conspicuous consumers on the planet.
I know who killed it (Score:2)
SERI is now NREL [Re:I know who killed it] (Score:2)
SERI was renamed the National Renewable Energy Laboratory [nrel.gov] when it was turned into a DOE National Lab in 1991, and is still going strong. NREL research has been responsible for much of the technological advances in solar technology for the last 40 years.
...It was to be the leading source of data about solar energy and employed some of the best scientists and engineers in the field.
It still is.
Re: SERI is now NREL [Re:I know who killed it] (Score:2)
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Haven’t there been major advances in panel chemistries in the past few years? As well as in bringing manufacturing costs down? And aren’t we on the verge of new chemistries that will make a big difference? Perovskites, tandem, thin-film, etc?
Wrestling Match (Score:2)
I'm calling that as a steaming (Score:5, Insightful)
The author is attributing their success to a local entrepreneurial spirit? I'm sure it doesn't have anything to do with the borderline-free business loans, loan deferment, land acquisition perks and zero-red tape status that the government gives preferred industries. Let's not forget that their polysilicon is produced by a small army of uighurs, who are absolutely beavering away in brutal manufacturing jobs purely for the love of their Han masters. Certainly, the Chinese solar companies are paying market rates for their input materials, water and power, right? Right?
So much eyerolling that I convulsed a little. I actually read the article. Half of the text is about the polysilicon industry, so much drivel about the farsight of Chinese businessmen and not a single mention of the fact that their workers are near-slaves getting paid pennies an hour. No, clearly the problem is lazy westerners, amirite? They gush about the Tongwei plant like it's a utopia. That company is really high on the list of places that most certainly uses uighur slave labor. Is Bloomberg that much in China's pocket or did this one slip past them? This is a blatant PR piece.
The US has plenty of shortsightedness and lots of it's own problems. We're far from perfect. But losing the solar market was not our fault. China shoveled money and forced labor at the industry and drove prices through the floor. We should be buying their panels. If they want to impoverish their own citizens in order to sell us solar panels below cost, we should oblige them and buy as many panels as they will sell us. The more we buy, the more cheap electricity we get, which totally drives the economy. When they get tired of making us richer, we can spin our solar panel industry back up, any year we want. It's just aluminum, copper, plastic, and bit of polysilicon. Absolutely nothing advanced.
I'm not a China hater. The country has a lot of genuine strengths and accomplishments. But this isn't one of them. Any middle-income country can grow an industry if it throws enough money at it. But at what cost?
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Good post. We should definitely be buying up those cheap solar panels. We should be doing the same with EVs as well. If China wants to make cheap EVs, we should be able to buy them. Just goes to show, regardless of who is in charge, the profits of American companies are more important then anything else, including the environment.
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Chinese solar panels have proven themselves to be solid products, and they’re not internet-connected. And solar panels are an environmental positive. The sooner we kick our addiction to fermented dinosaur, the better off the world will be.
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Bloomberg is just a blog site now. You might as well read Livejournal.
Oh please. (Score:5, Informative)
Not that I'm entirely complaining, apart from the coal, gas, and nuclear plant shenanigans...and general support for human rights. The world is definitely benefiting from China's corrupt behavior to some extent. If you have to spew a product into the global economy at turbocharged volume and high holistic cost, solar panels would be one of the most helpful. But I think it will work itself out one way or another. They can't keep doing that - it's unsustainable by definition. Which means either they'll change or they'll fall out and someone else will take up the task; hopefully a free country that avoids shenanigans.
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I've been tracking the solar industry since the early '00s, and China's formula there is the same as its formula in every other industry: Massively externalized cost, allowing it to undercut prices. They would literally do shit like build a government-subsidized coal power plant to run the factory making solar panels (and now are building nuclear plants to do the same), effectively hiding the capital cost of the factories.
Oh, really? Any their government-built power plant only supplies to some solar panel factory and nobody else can get the power? Where is it? In Wisconsin [aaahq.org]? Or in Arizona [reuters.com]? North Carolina, Kentucky, Mississippi, Texas, Michigan [goodjobsfirst.org]?
You either know nothing or the best you could say would be "the same as its formula in the USA". Yet your fellow citizen modded you "informative".
Labor rights are nonexistent, so worker pay stays low in comparison to anyone but other authoritarian states.
Like in capitalist [columbia.edu] states [aclu.org]?
We turned it into an identity marker (Score:2)
We had a multi-trillion dollar jobs program lined up that would have gotten us out of the Middle East once and for all and transformed our energy and we pissed it all away because somebody said the words woke and DEI and that set off about half the country on a tirade.
So we're right back where we are
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I thought we were a net exporter of energy.
And the Fossilitas (Score:2)
One political party denies the need for clean power. Their platform denies global warming. Almost every project is fought by "local" astroturf campaigns funded through Fossilista funded groups.
Trump and all his lackeys are calling to defund solar projects. Trump thinks windmills kill birds (about 1% as many as cats, about 10% as many as powerlines. And the whales...
What did you expect?
So-called 'conservatives' carry the blame also (Score:3)
Having an entire political party that actively wants to drag us all backwards both techonologically as well as sociologically as well as politically is a cancer on our entire society, and that's precisely what they've been doing for decades and decades now, and will continue to do until they are rendered irrelevant in our government.
Go ahead and mod me down to '-1, Troll', I'll just keep reposting this same comment until you jackasses run out of moderation points.
But Chinese factories are not gender neutral (Score:1)
Now there you have some unfair trade practice!
Ever seen a drag queen working in a solar cell factory in China?
Bet you never have.
Espionage is what killed it... (Score:2)
This was killed over a decade ago. First US solar companies were complaining about being hacked, then China started shipping panels cheaper than the rare earths to make them, which bankrupted almost all but a few US solar panel makers. No tariffs or other things were enacted, because nobody gave a shit until people started realizing China was ahead and US towns had no factories anymore. This is ironic because a company like Harley had the competition taxed into oblivion via protective tariffs and even US
No rare earths involved [Re:Espionage is what...] (Score:5, Informative)
This was killed over a decade ago. First US solar companies were complaining about being hacked, then China started shipping panels cheaper than the rare earths to make them,
Solar panels are not made with rare earth elements. The fact that you think they are indicates that you have not even tried to learn about the subject.
The article we're discussing focuses on the production of polysilicon, the raw material used to make silicon solar arrays, which is the technology of the low-cost Chinese panels that are dominant in the market today. Not a single rare-earth atom to be found.
...Blame the US government for not responding to a trade war. In any other sector, predatory dumping would be responded to quickly and without mercy, but solar was happily ceded offshore, just like TVs, the steel industry, and other things.
In fact, if you read the article, you would have seen that this exactly the opposite of the truth. The U.S. did start a trade war, putting a high tariff on the low-cost Chinese panels with the excuse that the Chinese manufacturers were dumping. In a response, the Chinese put a tariff on their imports of polysilicon from the U.S., once the largest manufacturer of polysilicon, and thence cut their imports of U.S. polysilicon to zero. This helped kickstart their own polysilicon business, now the largest in the world.
The U.S. started and lost the trade war.
Re:No rare earths involved [Re:Espionage is what.. (Score:5, Interesting)
It is this thinking that also leads to USA consumers complaining that BEV are too expensive and only the rich can afford them, where as many other countries' consumers are taking advantage of now affordable BEVs and scratching their heads about what consumers in the USA are complaining about.
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IMHO, tariffs are great for the US automotive industry, but vehicles are just stupid-expensive in the US, especially combined by the fact they are a must have for all but the most urbanized regions. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the US has the worst, most overpriced selection of vehicles in the world. Even if you compare prices from vehicles sold in Mexico with currency differences, one finds that US sales pretty much subsidize everyone else. When actual good vehicles start to hit US shores, regulatory ca
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The U.S. started and lost the trade war.
The US-China solar panel trade war only exists because we're stilling buying their panels.
The U.S. did start a trade war, putting a high tariff on the low-cost Chinese panels with the excuse that the Chinese manufacturers were dumping.
Not only are they dumping, it's getting worse. https://www.reuters.com/busine... [reuters.com]
with some module-only manufacturers taking orders at negative margins to preserve market share
Re: No rare earths involved [Re:Espionage is what. (Score:1)
Solar panels, like most semi-conductors are not just made of (highly purified and quickly depleting river) sand. If you made solar panels that way, youâ(TM)d get a glass sheet. All semi-conductors are doped with various rare earth metals, production and power conversion also requires rare earth metals. The exact composition differs based on the production and desired product, but amongst other things rare earth elements such as indium and tellurium and critical elements such as lithium and manganese as
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Solar panels, like most semi-conductors are not just made of (highly purified and quickly depleting river) sand. If you made solar panels that way, youâ(TM)d get a glass sheet. All semi-conductors are doped with various rare earth metals,
No silicon solar cells are doped with rare earth metals. This is my field of expertise; I assure you rare earth elements are not used in any solar cell technologies ever invented.
...The exact composition differs based on the production and desired product, but amongst other things rare earth elements such as indium and tellurium and critical elements such as lithium and manganese
None of the elements you mention are rare earth elements, and none of them are used in silicon solar cells. Indium is used in the high-efficiency cells we use in space (the top junction is gallium-indium phosphide), and in the form of indium-tin oxide it's used as a transparent conductor, but it's not used in terrestrial silicon a
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Protective tariffs help domestic companies the same way another fix helps a heroin addict.
Subsidies for R&D sometimes make sense. Corporate subsidies for manufacturing do not.
Our current tariffs on PV panels just make them more expensive and slow the transition to renewable energy.
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Our current tariffs on PV panels just make them more expensive and slow the transition to renewable energy.
I might be cynical, but I believe that was the intended purpose. And I'd bet money that the biggest proponents of those tariffs are taking big dollar donations from big oil.
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The steel foundries in Germany and Korea were built from the ground-up. The foundries in the USA stayed archaic because they were untouched by war and the USA had a monopoly, until they didn't. Even then, the USA refused to modernize, eventually having to ship their (inferior) foundries to the winner. Tariffs meant to force domestic consumption caused milling factories to shutter because they couldn't buy high-purity steel.
The steel advantage then fed into the manufacturing of combustion engines, makin
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You mean a few steel companies refused to modernize, when they easily had the money to do so.
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More like a vast majority not realizing that real economic growth is dependent on cheap energy. Making energy expensive and rather static by trying to reach green goals assured that places that didn't care about such things would outcompete us easily.
Whatever else you may think, this is just a fact.
While this is a fact, perhaps it would behoove a nation to think about what's more important. Is it more important to keep the economy growing, or to have a place for citizens to continue to prosper within the country. I know we love our competitive metrics, and I know the biggest competitive metric to the oligarchs obsessed with finance is economic, there's still the little, minor issue that we may be headed into a realm where, whether the economy looks good today or not, nothing will look good from the ai
Re: There was no race. (Score:1)
USA air and water are cleaner than it has been in past 50+ years. The sky is not falling.
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Except for the little problem of solar and wind being the two cheapest forms of electricity since the Obama administration, with a price stability that fossil energy could hardly dream of:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Sure, existing fossil power is cheaper than building a new renewable plant...until your power plant needs replacing, at which point you have to fork over money to China because they didn't get fooled into ignoring renewable energy technology by stupid-ass culture war politics.
Re:There was no race. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because there have never been massive subsidies for fossil energy, right?
Oops! Looks like fossil energy got around $7T of subsidy globally in 2022 alone... [imf.org]
Why don't we remove all the subsidies and see which is cheaper? Hint: it won't be fossil energy.
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Re: There was no race. (Score:2)
Where is "here" and what material are they made of?
I'm not trying to be a smartass and also not trying to sound dumb (I may sound that way anyway) but I'm going to assume you're not from the US. Here in the US a typical home roof is covered with asphalt shingles. The phrase "replacing the roof" typically only means removing and replacing the shingles; the underlying roof structure remains in place.
Some roofs use shingles that are so thick that they are called "100 year roofs." I have family that had that
Re: There was no race. (Score:1)
Likely someone who doesnâ(TM)t know much about roofing. There is no roof that lasts forever, not shingles, not metal, not clay - youâ(TM)re going to make a choice between cost, weight and durability. Making a roof âstrongerâ(TM) also adds weight, weight causes structural problems and harder or more rigid features are less likely to withstand hail or earthquakes or the simple fact that your house can shift, sink and move over time, both from the foundation and external forces like wind or
Re: There was no race. (Score:2)
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You know what else receives massive subsidies? Fossil fuels:
https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mi... [mit.edu]
Re: There was no race. (Score:1)
Nuclear power can be done at very low cost, like 2c industrial, 4c/kWh retail for power (which is coincidentally what I pay for energy).
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The Chinese government invested more money in green energy than the rest of the world combined. The USA refused because the federal government is not allowed to own anything and US-ians didn't demand their state government prepare for future energy needs. (There are exceptions, such as Texas producing the most oil and green energy.)
Re: There was no race. (Score:2)
Re: There was no race. (Score:1)
USA federal government owns enormous natural resources on land and under the surface. Some is leased for commercial use (ski areas in forests), some is leased for grazing and placing solar arrays and windmills, and some is leased with extraction royalties. Even the CIA runs an investment division.
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You seem to think that cause and effect has a 4-year statute of limitations.
It doesn't. There are countless examples of policy effects still happening from previous administrations. To suggest otherwise is absolutely ridiculous and shows either how ignorant you are, or how ignorant you are pretending to be.
Here's just one example of many: the Trump tax cuts that is still driving up deficits, while still screwing people in higher cost-of-living states through the elimination of the SALT deduction, which ev
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Re: There was no race. (Score:1)
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