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Yeah more dependency on china! Nothing to backfire, no Chinese influence at all!
by ifjfkfkfkfj 4mo ago
Yeah more dependency on china! Nothing to backfire, no Chinese influence at all!
- lysace 4mo agoThis is indeed the risk.
- mesk 4mo agoReally ? One doesnt needs China to produce electricity once its installed.
- bor_real 4mo agoIs buying the means to produce energy from China worse than buying energy directly from Russia?
- Tade0 4mo agoHard to call it influence when the panels, once installed, just work and slowly degrade over the course of years. There are more immediate ways for China to influence Europe. Meanwhile the recent oil debacle showed how fragile a system it is to have fossil fuels shipped across the planet.
- have_faith 4mo agoChina might produce the most panels at volume but this isn't a hardline monopoly like being able to cut off oil pipelines. We can produce panels ourselves if we _need_ to (as a coalition of friendly countries), it will of course be more expensive, but expensive is better than not possible. Also, the more panels we already have, the less reliant we are. Energy doesn't stop flowing because deliveries of new panels stop during a conflict. You just pause expansion. A very different scenario to fuel reserves running dry in weeks.
- ben_w 4mo ago> Also, the more panels we already have, the less reliant we are. Energy doesn't stop flowing because deliveries of new panels stop during a conflict. You just pause expansion. A very different scenario to fuel reserves running dry in weeks. If someone is genuinely worried about China cutting off their power, the fact my very cheap solar inverter came with an app should probably be a consideration here. I'm not saying the Chinese did put a kill switch into it, but I am saying that we all know what Snowden reported about the US, and given that it really wouldn't be a surprise.
- triceratops 4mo ago> this isn't a hardline monopoly like being able to cut off oil pipelines "Solar panels come from China" is a made-up problem. Oil pipelines and oil production equipment already have supply chains rooted in China and no one worries about that.
- triceratops 4mo agoYou don't buy anything else from China? You're sure none of the oil drills or gas turbines in your country are from there?
- fmobus 4mo agoUnlike the oil dependency system, where there's actual scarcity of the thing you need (oil), there's nothing special about building solar panels that locks you to China. Basically any country could build it, but they need to figure out how to build stuff in general (as opposed to outsourcing like the last three decades)
- triceratops 4mo agoSolar panels are oil drills, not oil.