5 ms·

The most significant US regulations in the area aren't even mentioned in this article: the prohibitively high tariffs on Chinese solar modules and electric vehi

by kragen 2y ago

The most significant US regulations in the area aren't even mentioned in this article: the prohibitively high tariffs on Chinese solar modules and electric vehicles, which at least double the cost of solar panels and EVs in the US compared to much of the rest of the world. Current US elites grew up in the energy crisis that started with the Arab oil embargo of 01973 cutting off US energy imports, and they seem determined to perpetuate that crisis, if necessary by cutting off US imports of energy production infrastructure themselves now that the foreigners won't do it for them anymore. The article vastly understates the rapidity of the change. It projects 3 TW of new renewable generation capacity in China over the next decade (02026-02036, I suppose), attributing that to an unpublished report from a consultancy that seems to protect its projections from criticism with an NDA. Given that the PRC installed 373 GW in renewable generation capacity last year (https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/statistics/202501/28/content_WS6798de96c6d0868f4e8ef410.html https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/statistics/202501/28/cont...) this seems like an implausibly low figure; linear extrapolation of installing that same amount every year would give us 3.7 TW installed over that period. But in fact it has been growing exponentially, so 20 TW of added capacity over the next decade seems like a more likely ballpark. That's nameplate capacity, so it's closer to 4 TW of actual energy generation.

_bin_ 2y ago
Because we cannot afford, geopolitically, to have a hostile rival nation with whom we may in the next decade be at war control our energy. There is no if, and, or but about that. Of course, most of said solar and battery tech was originally developed by Americans; chinese bought old patents, bought companies out of bankruptcy, and threw obscene amounts of state capital at developing it further. and now we're stuck with crap like CATL owning a huge amount of the advanced battery market. The implication that this is "just what the market decided" and that we must concede to the artificial scenario beijing has constructed, likely with the express intent of gaining leverage over more nations, is ridiculous. Instead, we should mass-invalidate every single chinese-owned patent. She built her economy on stealing ours anyhow. Do it ourselves, or rely on allied/subordinate nations for manufacturing.
- m_fayer 2y ago
  Is casually conflating allied nations with “subordinates” some sort of signal of political orientation now?
  - kragen 2y ago
    Usually it signals that the person is opposed to US foreign policy because they consider it imperialist, but in this case it seems to signal that the person favors an explicitly imperialist foreign policy for the US. Horseshoe theory, I suppose.
    - dingnuts 2y ago
      no, the commentator is simply proposing actually responding to the imperialism of China by protecting US assets and national security instead of rolling over and taking it because of misguided principles about free trade and intellectual property that the CCP has undermined for forty years to arrive in a position where they can undercut us on price through human rights abuses. It is China that is imperialist and that has ruined the post cold war free trade world order. The US must respond or China will be the world hegemon. Would you prefer that?
      - RUnconcerned 2y ago
        Imperialism is when you take all the resources capitalists poured into your country because you had horrendously low labor costs and use them to develop yourself into an economic superpower rather than meekly continuing to be the factory for cheap crap for western nations. Got it.
      - colechristensen 2y ago
        Eh. Nixon helped bring China into the global community and the economic ties help bring (hundreds of?) millions out of extreme poverty and built up a major trade partner. Now with China's success the very free trade policy between our countries needs to be adjusted and slowly dialed back towards fairness. The problem being there are plenty of actors whose motivation isn't "balancing what's best for my country and the world" in a fair way but just "whatever is best for me right now", and the shortsighted selfishness (which in different actors both supports and opposed similar policies for different reasons) really gets in the way of arriving at an optimal outcome for everyone.
gamblor956 2y ago
China's solar panels are cheap because the Chinese government is subsidizing solar panel production with the express purpose of destroying solar panel industries in other nations. Hence, many countries impose tariffs on Chinese solar panels. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/business/china-solar-energy-exports.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/business/china-solar-ener...
- kragen 2y ago
  More trustworthy link for the article: https://archive.fo/oD56w https://archive.fo/oD56w This is basically nonsense. Chinese solar panels are cheap because they are produced efficiently, with orders of magnitude less materials and energy than were required in 02012, when the US started imposing "anti-dumping" tariffs on them. I've read many of the US Department of Commerce filings on the topic attempting to argue that the current prices are unfairly subsidized. The arguments are embarrassingly bad, arguing over things like what the fair price of solar glass should be, or whether the fair price of the labor of Chinese solar panel assembly workers should be determined by comparing to Malaysian electronics assembly labor or Romanian electronics assembly labor. (They settled on Turkish labor.) Even when resorting to such absurd arguments, the countervailing tariffs the DoC decided it could justify were only in the range of 10-15%: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/07/11/2023-14563/crystalline-silicon-photovoltaic-cells-whether-or-not-assembled-into-modules-from-the-peoples https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/07/11/2023-14... Finding the original filings in these cases, spanning 13 years at this point, took a fair bit of digging, but it was very eye-opening. See for example https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2014-12-23/pdf/2014-30071.pdf https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2014-12-23/pdf/2014-3... and Barcode:4426784-02 C-570-011 (not linkable by any URL). But, basically, you have to ask, if subsidies are the reason Chinese solar module prices today are lower than module prices were in 02012, when they cost €0.64 per peak watt instead of today's €0.110, does that mean that Chinese taxpayers are paying 82% of the cost of installing solar panels around the world? China is just exporting €100 billion a year of its tax revenues in the form of solar panels, with the intent of at some point raising the prices to above where they were in 02012, say €0.75 per peak watt? When should we expect that other shoe to drop? Because the solar panel industries in other nations are pretty thoroughly destroyed, except for those created by Chinese companies seeking ways around US tariffs. It just isn't a plausible story, even if it is being promoted by the same newspaper that promoted the story of Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction" to justify invading Iraq.
colechristensen 2y ago
Regardless of tariffs, solar is still the cheapest energy source in the US and the fastest growing even in absolute terms. We shoudln't let China overproduce and dump excess solar productions in its own attempts to control the market. We're trying to not repeat the energy dependence on unfriendly foreign powers. We don't want the Chinese Solar Embargo of 2026.
- philipkglass 2y ago
  We shouldn't let China overproduce and dump excess solar productions in its own attempts to control the market. I think that this misreads how the Chinese solar industry works. It's one of the less government-controlled industries in China. It's fiercely competitive, which leads to low prices, rapid change, and periodic bankruptcies. Chinese-made solar panels became popular for the same reason their T-shirts and microwave ovens became popular: acceptable quality offered at unbeatable prices. I also think that there's low risk of lock-in from buying Chinese solar products now. Solar panels have a typical operating lifetime about equivalent to 5 years at 100% of rated power. In practice this means something more like 20 years in a solar farm in a very sunny climate or 35 years in a cloudy climate. The steady state replacement rate to maintain a nation's solar capacity is therefore about 3%-5% of the initial installation rate. If China prohibited solar panel exports, Western countries could maintain existing solar farm capacity with only tiny outside-of-China solar manufacturing capacity. There would be plenty of time for not-China countries to determine if the embargo were temporary or persistent before investing in more expensive but more dependable domestic factories.
  - colechristensen 2y ago
    >I also think that there's low risk of lock-in from buying Chinese solar products now. It's not lock-in, it's price competitiveness of locally produced solar. If Chinese solar is half price, domestic industry won't exist. If relations with China further deteriorate, they may restrict access. If there was a war we'd be out a major source of energy production/growth. Currently the US is expected to manufacture solar modules at least equal to solar installs last year. Being able to maintain production if there was an embargo, we're seeing something like a 20% year over year growth of total installed solar.
tomrod 2y ago
As a sidenote, I love that you reference 1973 as 01973. I suggest considering labeling even as 11973, based on some reasonable humanist-based information.[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czgOWmtGVGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czgOWmtGVGs
- g-b-r 2y ago
  As a sidenote, I hate it, can someone explain where does it come from?
  - Jtsummers 2y ago
    https://longnow.org/ideas/long-now-years-five-digit-dates-and-10k-compliance-at-home/ https://longnow.org/ideas/long-now-years-five-digit-dates-an... - kragen has posted this before in relation to the five digit years.
    - g-b-r 2y ago
      If the people from 10.000 wanted me to write useless digits for 8 thousand years, I'd leave them a bad planet just out of spite xD
kragen 2y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43436151 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43436151 is a recent comment of mine with cost estimates based on current pricing.

by kragen 2y ago

_bin_ 2y ago

Because we cannot afford, geopolitically, to have a hostile rival nation with whom we may in the next decade be at war control our energy. There is no if, and, or but about that. Of course, most of said solar and battery tech was originally developed by Americans; chinese bought old patents, bought companies out of bankruptcy, and threw obscene amounts of state capital at developing it further. and now we're stuck with crap like CATL owning a huge amount of the advanced battery market. The implication that this is "just what the market decided" and that we must concede to the artificial scenario beijing has constructed, likely with the express intent of gaining leverage over more nations, is ridiculous. Instead, we should mass-invalidate every single chinese-owned patent. She built her economy on stealing ours anyhow. Do it ourselves, or rely on allied/subordinate nations for manufacturing.

m_fayer 2y ago
Is casually conflating allied nations with “subordinates” some sort of signal of political orientation now?
- kragen 2y ago
  Usually it signals that the person is opposed to US foreign policy because they consider it imperialist, but in this case it seems to signal that the person favors an explicitly imperialist foreign policy for the US. Horseshoe theory, I suppose.
  - dingnuts 2y ago
    no, the commentator is simply proposing actually responding to the imperialism of China by protecting US assets and national security instead of rolling over and taking it because of misguided principles about free trade and intellectual property that the CCP has undermined for forty years to arrive in a position where they can undercut us on price through human rights abuses. It is China that is imperialist and that has ruined the post cold war free trade world order. The US must respond or China will be the world hegemon. Would you prefer that?
    - RUnconcerned 2y ago
      Imperialism is when you take all the resources capitalists poured into your country because you had horrendously low labor costs and use them to develop yourself into an economic superpower rather than meekly continuing to be the factory for cheap crap for western nations. Got it.
    - colechristensen 2y ago
      Eh. Nixon helped bring China into the global community and the economic ties help bring (hundreds of?) millions out of extreme poverty and built up a major trade partner. Now with China's success the very free trade policy between our countries needs to be adjusted and slowly dialed back towards fairness. The problem being there are plenty of actors whose motivation isn't "balancing what's best for my country and the world" in a fair way but just "whatever is best for me right now", and the shortsighted selfishness (which in different actors both supports and opposed similar policies for different reasons) really gets in the way of arriving at an optimal outcome for everyone.

gamblor956 2y ago

China's solar panels are cheap because the Chinese government is subsidizing solar panel production with the express purpose of destroying solar panel industries in other nations. Hence, many countries impose tariffs on Chinese solar panels. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/business/china-solar-energy-exports.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/business/china-solar-ener...

kragen 2y ago
More trustworthy link for the article: https://archive.fo/oD56w https://archive.fo/oD56w This is basically nonsense. Chinese solar panels are cheap because they are produced efficiently, with orders of magnitude less materials and energy than were required in 02012, when the US started imposing "anti-dumping" tariffs on them. I've read many of the US Department of Commerce filings on the topic attempting to argue that the current prices are unfairly subsidized. The arguments are embarrassingly bad, arguing over things like what the fair price of solar glass should be, or whether the fair price of the labor of Chinese solar panel assembly workers should be determined by comparing to Malaysian electronics assembly labor or Romanian electronics assembly labor. (They settled on Turkish labor.) Even when resorting to such absurd arguments, the countervailing tariffs the DoC decided it could justify were only in the range of 10-15%: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/07/11/2023-14563/crystalline-silicon-photovoltaic-cells-whether-or-not-assembled-into-modules-from-the-peoples https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/07/11/2023-14... Finding the original filings in these cases, spanning 13 years at this point, took a fair bit of digging, but it was very eye-opening. See for example https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2014-12-23/pdf/2014-30071.pdf https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2014-12-23/pdf/2014-3... and Barcode:4426784-02 C-570-011 (not linkable by any URL). But, basically, you have to ask, if subsidies are the reason Chinese solar module prices today are lower than module prices were in 02012, when they cost €0.64 per peak watt instead of today's €0.110, does that mean that Chinese taxpayers are paying 82% of the cost of installing solar panels around the world? China is just exporting €100 billion a year of its tax revenues in the form of solar panels, with the intent of at some point raising the prices to above where they were in 02012, say €0.75 per peak watt? When should we expect that other shoe to drop? Because the solar panel industries in other nations are pretty thoroughly destroyed, except for those created by Chinese companies seeking ways around US tariffs. It just isn't a plausible story, even if it is being promoted by the same newspaper that promoted the story of Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction" to justify invading Iraq.

colechristensen 2y ago

Regardless of tariffs, solar is still the cheapest energy source in the US and the fastest growing even in absolute terms. We shoudln't let China overproduce and dump excess solar productions in its own attempts to control the market. We're trying to not repeat the energy dependence on unfriendly foreign powers. We don't want the Chinese Solar Embargo of 2026.

philipkglass 2y ago
We shouldn't let China overproduce and dump excess solar productions in its own attempts to control the market. I think that this misreads how the Chinese solar industry works. It's one of the less government-controlled industries in China. It's fiercely competitive, which leads to low prices, rapid change, and periodic bankruptcies. Chinese-made solar panels became popular for the same reason their T-shirts and microwave ovens became popular: acceptable quality offered at unbeatable prices. I also think that there's low risk of lock-in from buying Chinese solar products now. Solar panels have a typical operating lifetime about equivalent to 5 years at 100% of rated power. In practice this means something more like 20 years in a solar farm in a very sunny climate or 35 years in a cloudy climate. The steady state replacement rate to maintain a nation's solar capacity is therefore about 3%-5% of the initial installation rate. If China prohibited solar panel exports, Western countries could maintain existing solar farm capacity with only tiny outside-of-China solar manufacturing capacity. There would be plenty of time for not-China countries to determine if the embargo were temporary or persistent before investing in more expensive but more dependable domestic factories.
- colechristensen 2y ago
  >I also think that there's low risk of lock-in from buying Chinese solar products now. It's not lock-in, it's price competitiveness of locally produced solar. If Chinese solar is half price, domestic industry won't exist. If relations with China further deteriorate, they may restrict access. If there was a war we'd be out a major source of energy production/growth. Currently the US is expected to manufacture solar modules at least equal to solar installs last year. Being able to maintain production if there was an embargo, we're seeing something like a 20% year over year growth of total installed solar.

tomrod 2y ago

As a sidenote, I love that you reference 1973 as 01973. I suggest considering labeling even as 11973, based on some reasonable humanist-based information.[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czgOWmtGVGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czgOWmtGVGs

g-b-r 2y ago
As a sidenote, I hate it, can someone explain where does it come from?
- Jtsummers 2y ago
  https://longnow.org/ideas/long-now-years-five-digit-dates-and-10k-compliance-at-home/ https://longnow.org/ideas/long-now-years-five-digit-dates-an... - kragen has posted this before in relation to the five digit years.
  - g-b-r 2y ago
    If the people from 10.000 wanted me to write useless digits for 8 thousand years, I'd leave them a bad planet just out of spite xD

kragen 2y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43436151 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43436151 is a recent comment of mine with cost estimates based on current pricing.