You’re either an astroturfer or useful idiot spreading oil lobby talking points.
Either you believe the climate science or you don’t. If you do, you know that we don’t have time for industry protectionism.
Do not assume bad faith over anything you disagree with.
While I disagree with the original statement, hostility never changed anyone’s mind.
hostility never changed anyone’s mind
Chronic abuse absolutely shapes human perception and behavior.
In this case, a lot of Lemmy has been so battered down by “China Bad” propaganda that they’ll straight up deny the threat of climate change to justify rejecting Chinese manufactured goods.
When panels were 30c/watt, projects at $1/watt in EU and US happened. 70c/watt was spent on labour, copper, support structures, and grid connection equipment. All of those can be locally produced, with possible exception of last item.
At 6c/watt, that is over 90% of power projects are local economy boosting instead of 70%. It provides cheaper energy that is useful for industrialization and cost of living benefits too. US tariffs on solar are entirely about protecting oil/gas extortion power instead of a $10B solar production industry that needs fairly expensive support.
Solar imports does not cause energy dependence. You have power for 30+ years with no reliance on continuous fuel supplies. Shoes and apparel is a $450B industry in US. You need new supplies every year, and it makes much more sense to secure supply in that industry for war on the world purposes.
It is good, period.
Local manufacturing is politically advantageous and may employ some people at the same time, but that’s where benefits end.
Europe didn’t reject Chinese face masks during COVID-19, and Europe shouldn’t reject Chinese solar during a climate emergency.
Solve that first, and political struggles later.
Local manufacturing is politically advantageous and may employ some people at the same time, but that’s where benefits end.
There are legitimate strategic concerns with sourcing things long-term from potentially hostile states.
Europe should absolutely take advantage of current Chinese production to improve their own green energy efforts, but looking into local production in addition is not just a ‘for-show’ move. As sanctions on Russia show, dependence on markets that can potentially turn hostile can be very damaging.
It’s not only a political struggle. Working conditions are tremendously better in Europe, Environmental Protection as well. Manufacturing photovoltaics takes a huge pile of chemicals that need to be handled properly to not cause any harm to the environment - China neither cares nor has any other incentives to actually do this properly, which is exactly why they are so cheap. Theres also the issue of poor quality, that if you’re manufacturing something that can have a significant impact on the environment, it should “count” and not be waste 10 years later.
Not only that, China’s subsidies are utterly unfair.
Destroying the environment in one part of the world to “save” a different one due to climate change is just ridiculously stupid and simple minded.
Solar manufacturing is not destroying China’s environment, fossil fuels are. By a massive margin.
They need to get off that merry go round as quickly as possible. While the efforts they’ve made are incredible it needs to continue to accelerate.
I wouldn’t say they’ve achieved these prices through subsidies in the way many people think. government support pushed their entire renewable industry ecosystem, western manufacturing went belly up, and now they are reaping the benefits.
It seems like China is putting a lot of efforts into becoming environmentally cleaner in the last few years though. I’m hoping that they’ve finally realized that pollution is bad.
I see where you’re coming with that, and in principle, some of the points you make I would clearly share under different circumstances.
But to me, even with the side effects, rapid rollout of green tech (even if its production is not kept to the best standard) beats slow incremental growth with good standards in place, given the urgency with which world requires it. After all, even poorly produced Chinese options very much do offset their footprint compared to the alternatives.
There are some points for concern, such as the use of lithium ion batteries, for example, but Chinese companies also think ahead and implement alternative options - in case of batteries, they increasingly work with sodium-ion instead.
As per “unfair” subsidies - I’d rather urge all countries to go all in and compete on those, rather than complain about those who implemented them. Subsidies for green tech are essential to secure our future, they boost the green industry and expedite its expansion, and they should only be seen as a good, not the evil.
Manufacturing photovoltaics takes a huge pile of chemicals that need to be handled properly to not cause any harm to the environment
Source for this? Cadmium is exclusive to 1 US manufacturer.
By providing big subsidies to green energy developement. Something the EU could also have done but refused to. And so they lost their entire lead.
Yep the EU will be beholden to a dictatorial regime again. Instead of placating Putin for gas it will be Xi for solar panels and batteries.
What? Have you ever had a battery powered device for longer than 2 years?
Theyre $1.25 per watt in south America right now (we have an energy crisis due to climate change caused drought)
Solar has always an extremely high ratio for megawatt per mass unit.
This price is really good
Assuming these prices are ideal for a solar grid, which EU country(s) would have the highest chance of shifting towards solar; I wonder
Probably all of them. Germany is really not ideal for solar in terms of weather, yet they are installed by many people all over the place, even today. With the cheaper prices things will get even better.
Germany is already over 50% renewable. :)
Just have to buy 1100 panels 😋 but then the price is 0.055€/watt …
I Want one, but only one or a couple, to put on my balcony…
Thousands of people buying rooftop panels was never going to be the best way towards a Water/Wind/Solar (WWS) future. Fitting panels to the roof has to work around the roof geometry and obstructions like vents. That makes every job a custom job. It also means thousands of small inverters rather than a few big ones.
Compare that to setting up thousands of panels on racks in a field. As long as it’s relatively open and flat, you just slap those babies down. You haul in a few big inverters which are often built right into shipping containers that can just be placed on site, hooked up, and left there. Batteries need inverters, too, so if your project includes some storage, then you only need one set of inverters.
I get the feeling of independence from the system that solar panels on the roof gives people, but it’s just not economically the best way to go. The insanely cheap dollars per MWh of solar is only seen when deploying them on a mass scale. That means roofs of commercial/industrial buildings or bigger.
Rooftop units might not be the least expressive, but they are absolutely the way to go. The less we rely on the utilities, the more demand we take off of their adding grid, that they refuse to upgrade. It also means more energy independence. A friend of mine has a small rooftop setup that has completely offset his electricity isn’t to the punt that he bought a plugin hybrid that never goes out battery for his day to day travels and costs him nothing to charge.
These are topcon modules only. Considering a 400W panel will have about 72 modules in it, that’s only about 15 panels worth. Of course, then you have to actually build the panel and connect the modules, put it behind glass inside a frame, then put in a bypass diode and leads for connection. So an actual panel ends up being about 5-10X the cost of the modules per W.
You can pay a lot less than 10x for completed panels. https://store.santansolar.com/ amazed me.
