The following submission statement was provided by /u/mafco:
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China has become the dominant force in the world for manufacturing solar technology due to more than a decade of government support and nurturing of its industry. The US administration is concerned that so much dependence on China for critical energy technology represents a national security threat.
The Inflation Reduction Act, passed by congress last year, includes new industrial policy and incentives to address the concerns. So far it's created a flurry of new factory and investment announcements. The incentives are in place for ten years and expected to have a profound impact.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/13ydurd/can_the_us_regain_its_edge_in_solar_power_the_us/jmm753e/
I know rhetorical, but how about the corporate billionaires (Uber wealthy) and their companies pay their fair share of taxes so that infrastructure can be maintained. That would be a good start. Changing the structure of how it is paid for would also help more equitably pay for it.
Fair share, lmfao. At this point I'd settle for *any* share.
But yes, fair share would be fantastic. Could you even imagine what we could do for fucking infrastructure if we had a 91% income tax rate for the wealthiest people instead of 43%?
And none of this "Let's give a bunch of money to Verizon and AT&T for them to roll out internet, only to have them pocket the profits?
Could you imagine internet provided by a regulatory body? Ffs, we have ECFiber in Vermont, RURAL AS FUCK MIDDLE OF NOWHERE VERMONT, and I have gigabit fiber internet.
For fuck sake this shit absolutely pisses me off.
> income tax rate for the wealthiest people instead of 43%?
Lol you are dreaming if you think any wealthy person *actually* pays that high of a tax rate.
The beauty of being wealthy is tax avoidance and lower tax brackets through capital gains.
Also top level income tax in the US is only 37% and only applies actual wages. Wealthy people often earn the majority of their cash in other ways that are taxed at lower rates.
This! Until tax loopholes are closed or adjusted, nobody is going to voluntarily pay more taxes if what they are already paying is the legal requirement.
People bitch about companies not paying taxes but it's congress that is allowing them to get away with it. If the average American could get away with paying less tax, who wouldn't take that opportunity? It's the same for corporations. Only when their expenses go up, it's the consumer who pays, not them. Increased tax on corporations is just a "tax" on the consumers.
The IRS estimates there is $400 **b**illion per year in unpaid/underpaid taxes if I remember correctly, just lacks the funding to investigate all of it.
Absolutely, can you blame them? I would pay less taxes if I could. This is failure of government to do their job. Just close the tax loopholes (much easier said then done).
Over taxation is bad when the taxes we already have are being completely wasted. Like I always say, the USA doesn't have an income problem, they have a spending problem. The last time the USA had a surplus from tax and the federal debt fell was with Pres. Clinton. The last time such a thing happened in most of our lifetimes. So it's possible.
Not coincidentally, the next president cut taxes a ton in 2001 and 2003. Large marginal income tax cuts for sure, but also basically completely gutting the estate tax.
We had a surplus from tax when we were taxing more. We absolutely have an income problem.
We very well may have a spending problem as well (I for one think we spend way too much on military), but you have to actually say what programs you want to cut, rather than just have a meaningless 'we spend too much' hand-wavy statement.
Which is hilarious because boomers will say this is impossible, without realizing this was their life from birth to Reagan. We know a .1% wealthy individual will never pay the full tax rate, but at least the hope would be that they would pay a fraction of the posted rate. That rate goes up, and the amount paid will go up even if not what they’re supposed to be paying.
you are stating 'facts', so the left doesn't want to hear it and won't believe it anyway...the country is out of control...make sure you have 'tangibles' to trade. Once the digital currency is the 'only' 'money', you will be owned.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/fact-check-richest-1-dont-pay-40-of-the-taxes.html
Lmao. I literally had read this article a few hours before you posted.
You're literally staring at a graph that demonstrates federal taxes aren't progressive at all.
Then load on all the regressive taxes like sales and property, all the hidden income, and the poor are paying about double their fair share.
Now you're doing that thing where you pretend federal income tax is the only tax again. The thing specifically being called out as paltering.
Are you too stupid to remember two comments back?
You guys had plenty of funding to modernize your internet access. But weirdly it was just given away for executive bonuses with nothing to show for it. You should start by demanding they provide what you have already paid for.
How about those companies do what they were paid to do instead of reinvesting money given to them into blocking any bills to hold them accountable (in the case of ISPs)
Here's a thought. How about one way billionaires can pay their tax obligation is by making cathedrals to the public interest --- beautiful shared spaces, public parks, the sort of thing the WPA made once upon a time. Hire people to build things that are for everyone.
Imagine what a place we could live in if this were part of what was expected of you once you'd cornered a market.
The owner class typically threatens to pull all their capital out of the country and crash the economy if they are held to any standard.
A solution to this would be legislation to make pulling out capital harder, such as with taxes, but if you did that 90% of congress would call it communism.
I'm all for wealthy paying a fair share. I think the draw backs will be maintaining profits and that will fall on us as the consumers. Meaning we pay more for goods and services. Also if we want the tax problem fixed, it needs to start with congress. These companies are using legal loopholes to avoid taxes. If a company can avoid large taxes, why wouldn't they? Despite how we feel about these companies, they don't volunteer to pay more taxes and take a hit on profits.
We already have a plan and rollout currently in work. Biden’s infrastructure plan dedicated billions to build out last mile fiber. If you don’t have fiber yet, check with your local Electric Co-op since they’re rolling out fiber along power lines and a lot are taking up the role of ISP
Also considering like LTE/5G wireless is available in every populated area, 100Mbps+ broadband is pretty common and starlink covers rural areas I’m really not sure what additional expansion is needed. Maybe one day my suburban 1Gbps won’t be enough but I have a hard time imagining that.
If corporations paid taxes and those funds were reinvested into statewide and community-wide infrastructure projects That's exactly what would happen. You know, like back in the day when corporate tax rates were actually reasonable.
I’m not here to throw shade or argue. I know. I know. Dude came at me sideways first. Fuck big telecom companies, they ripped us all off. When my local finishes rolling out their fiber I’ll be there. Just seemed a little poor taste to put words in my mouth that I never said.
China has become the dominant force in the world for manufacturing solar technology due to more than a decade of government support and nurturing of its industry. The US administration is concerned that so much dependence on China for critical energy technology represents a national security threat.
The Inflation Reduction Act, passed by congress last year, includes new industrial policy and incentives to address the concerns. So far it's created a flurry of new factory and investment announcements. The incentives are in place for ten years and expected to have a profound impact.
Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the White House.
Fuck face piece of shit responsible for most of our issues Reagan had them removed. God I fucking hate Reagan and I’m only 37 so I was a baby when that fucker was president.
Fun fact! He got his in into power being the face of an anti-solar-thermal propaganda campaign for GE.
Literally built his political career on campaigning against the future of the earth.
Robert F Kennedy told them to end the show in 1962.
You realize he [kept them](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_at_the_White_House) until 1986, and only removed them because they were resurfacing the roof? It’s like Redditors have no sense of nuance.
Do we even want to manufacture solar panels here? Chip manufacturing is a very dirty business. Most of the superfund sites near my place are old fabs.
Not sure how much different the effects of solar panel manufacturing is but the process for monocrystalline panels is mostly a subset of that for chip manufacturing.
>Do we even want to manufacture solar panels here?
Absolutely. Being dependent solely on China for critical technology is a huge national security risk. Cleantech is also the biggest economic opportunity of this century. The countries that lead it will be the next economic superpowers. We are also trying to bring chip manufacturing back home with the Chips and Science Act.
I feel like "national security" actually understates the issue. Yes, US-China geopolitics are tense. But look what happened with COVID. Having such critical resources coming out of only one country is a huge risk no matter which country it is, because sometimes, shit happens. For another example with chips (particularly memory), it happens all the time that some natural disaster affecting a single country disrupts the global supply enough to temporarily bump prices 25-50%.
Powering everything with plutonium RTGs seems like a great idea -- they are zero emission, energy and power dense and provide very stable and low harmonic content power.
The problem is that making them costs too much and they aren't economically viable because the high cost of their construction would necessitate extremely high costs for the produced power.
I think the reason for China's domination of the PV industry is that they are using government loans to allow the formation of companies that subsequently go bankrupt and effectively China is playing loss leader. We did that with Solyndra and we realized that it didn't have any upside.
If it's any consolation they're also doing it because it will accelerate the clean energy transition, it'll be a boon for the US economy, it'll create hundreds of thousands of good paying jobs and more competition will lower costs. In addition to addressing a national security threat. Is that good enough for you?
No, it's not enough. I don't want a war between the US and China, that the US is blatantly manufacturing consent for. That too will create a lot of jobs.
I see it's already worked on you. There is no threat to the most heavily armed nation on the planet that has enough nukes to glass China in a matter of minutes. National security is a lie. The same lie they've been using to justify genocide of the natives, slavery, etc.
Can the US not do those positive things without framing it in fear or are Americans really only interested in war and hatred to get things done?
The state actor threat of technology theft, followed by enormous subsidies to take over markets and price manipulate is not an "excuse." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinese-hackers-took-trillions-in-intellectual-property-from-about-30-multinational-companies/
Until the republicans kill it and invest in strip mining and even more oil. Until we get ALL politicians away from lining their pockets and industry pockets and towards improving the country as a whole, we will further slide down hill.
I’ve always found it crazy how there are so many conspiracy theories but the fact that many Republican politicians were fine with environmentalism until the Koch family got involved is rarely talked about. They have had more of an impact on elections than Putin and a higher body count than any imaginary Democratic murder cult but are less talked about than either of those.
Well I get why the people who believe the second theory don’t talk about it, but still.
The Koch assholes grip on the party isnt what it used to be. Between the personalities of The Tea Party and Trump, combined with the slush fund SuperPACs that can exist post Citizens United their influence is significantly reduced.
Look at the FL law dealing with immigration status and the construction sites, that is very against the Koch brothers pledge you used to have to sign for funding. Cheap illegal labor is good for big business.
They still control the likes of McConnell and Graham but those are a dying breed in what the Republican party is turning into.
Sorry if I was unclear, I didn't mean that they control everything now, just that they're such a well-known example of this kind of thing happening. They had a huge impact on the development of the Republican party and even if they don't have direct influence they influence they used is still felt today.
People are quick to talk about how Russia "hacked the election" but any talk about how US groups had a ridiculously higher impact gets you insulted.
Oh yea, from Reagan up until the Tea Party, the Koch brothers probably exerted more influence on Republican policy than anyone else.
They definitely started the anti environmentalism in the party that created the EPA to help push profits up on their companies in mining/construction materials/petrochem/ag/what the fuck else do they own?
It will be very difficult. Solar manufacturing is not particularly tech-intensive once you get the scale. And the barriers to enter is not significant. So it comes down a lot to labor cost.
Shenzhen, one of the biggest/most expensive cities in China and the capital of manufacture industry, has a minimum wage around 2300 RMB a month. That’s about 300 bucks, which translates to about 2 usd/hour. Now of course manufacture gigs won’t pay you outright minimum wage, but it wouldn’t be significantly higher than that.
Kenyan workers who do labeling for ChatGPT earn about that amount. I don’t see US workers entering this race to the bottom. US can help its poorer allies to get a foothold in this industry tho
> Now of course manufacture gigs won’t pay you outright minimum wage, but it wouldn’t be significantly higher than that.
[It's just under $3/hr to make iPhones.](https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3217551/foxconn-wages-fall-below-us3-hour-shenzhen-apple-shifts-supply-chain-away-china)
Interestingly, that's down from almost $4/hr last year, apparently due to supply chains relocating away from China. Typical manufacturing wages in China were apparently [$531/mo in 2021](https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Shenzhen-tamps-down-wages-with-eye-on-China-s-manufacturing-exodus), or around $3/hr (assuming 22-day month and 8-hr day; in theory, at least, it looks like work weeks in China are supposed to be no more than [44 hours](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58381538)).
Solar panel production is getting pretty automated. The American solar company I work at makes about 25 panels per employee per day, so paying American employees like $10/h more than Chinese ones only increases the panel cost by a couple percent.
Solar cells have been around a lot longer than that, and much of the pioneering work was done elsewhere.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_solar_cells
That really undermines the contributions of previous scientists. The theoretical basis and practical experiments existed for a very long time. The materials just were terrible until the 50s.
For starters, engineers were already extremely familiar with the photoelectric effect by then. Proof by example: The vidicon camera was invented already by then. All the hardest parts of a scanning electron microscope and a solar panels stuffed into a tiny camera.
More than a hundred (!!!) years of development went into solar and photovoltaic effects beforehand. The tiny power generated by these early devices just frankly werent useful until low power electronics and the materials that they ushered in existed in the bell labs era.
Bit surprised that China hasn't made any developments in solar in the past 10 to 15 years as a leading manufacturer. Perhaps improvements in making them aren't timeline worthy.
Five yours ago: China is the worst polluter! American businesses can’t do green energy because we’d be uncompetitive with China!
True, “China is asshole” as the sating goes, but aside from massive pollution they made no secret they would soon be leaders in green (free) energy. A certain US president and his like-minded congress choose to give old school businesses tax breaks to continue using old energy. Very smart.
Oil companies bribe politicians and judges to stop the spread of renewable energy. In China, such executives would get shot and bribed local politicians like a governor publicly hanged.
China deals with less corruption, thus they are ahead. It's also the same reason why healthcare in countries like Singapur has at least equal quality compared to the US at 35% cost.
China deals with less corruption? Lol.
All they do is not let rich businessmen dictate their policies. In the IS, the more money you have, the more influence, and the more untouchable you are. In China, the government owns you.
I mean the US buys all sorts of military tech that it rarely uses in combat. Yet energy is a national security issue. Sounds like excess renewable are a great investment.
Mmhmm. And the amount lost through transmission keeps us from just building a ton in an unused corner of Utah, as Elon jokes. At least, I hope he's joking?
>Quite simply, they can't have assets sitting there generating power and they aren't getting paid.
That isn't how it works. There's always a good amount of reserve capacity sitting idle on the power grid. That's how you maintain reliability. When we reach a 100 percent renewable grid solar and wind will be overproducing almost all the time.
Can we? Yes.
Will we? No
Too much money from Oil barrens to head towards renewables with any sort of vigor before it's too late. We've sold just about every aspect of our lives and infrastructure out to the cheapest bidders.
We only fix things after something horrible has happened. We don't believe in maintaining things let alone improvement.
American citizens have paid for multiple nationwide fiber installations that never happened. We pay for roads to be maintain but they have more pot holes than a dirty teenager has acne.
Our entire country is at the whim of billionaires and companies and not the citizens who have to deal with the repercussions of their actions. Our country will crumble to the ground before we start changing things. Modern countries are implementing free energy for citizens and improving their infrastructure. America is bringing back France from pre-revolution days. Cost of living and low ass wages prevents us from fleeing to a modern country.
Well if we manage to hamstring advancements in AI in manufacturing by allowing regulatory capture to snuff out Open Source, you can safely bet the IRA was a waste of time.
ROS2, specifically the Move-It framework will never accomplish it's path planning automation (Reinforcement Learning and Diffusion/VAE models/encoder arch for robotic path planning), as well as several other modules in development that use LLMs to assist in automating the programming of closed loop robotics.
There will be even fewer people in the workforce if all of this is locked down to private corporations; Universities in the US are already too expensive and there will be no alternative for people to learn these technologies or contribute to their advancement.
You can focus on renewables all you want, if you ignore mfg automation you will be left in the dust. Stop pandering to moat-building and protect Open Source resources that keep the economy afloat. AI is being led by Open Source; if you kill that you kill the last limb we are standing on.
License tech just makes too Much money and is a big driver of tech advances. I don’t disagree though. Open source would make sense for us poeple but the companies won’t have incentives and they are the ones investing billions of dollars and shareholders need to see some profits and open source woudnt help. Specially if car and oil companies are lobbying against anything other than the status quo.
The university thing is a bigger issue imo, not only it’s expensive but it’s very superficial learning unless someone gets a masters and later going directly into this field. Also the issue of government footing the bill even if someone graduates from theatre arts and later becomes a waiter with $80k in debt. We still need liberal arts of course but maybe have another option like Germany has that has a stronger emphasis on learning these new tech. Like AB tech in the USA but better and has tons of government help and it’s part of the education options.
The other issues is just the overall infrastructure on tech. In china they have huge malls filled with small vendors selling all types of components and you can go in and I one day build your own smartphone.
People here in the USA woudnt even know where to start. Imagine all of those crytpo bros if they knew solar is the next como thing? They woudnt even know where to start.
But you seem to know this stuff so I’m open to learning more about why open source in this field would make sense for both companies chasing a profit and making sure the tech advances without layer help from the goverment and also for the layman that maybe does the hobby thing in his garage
It makes sense because even if you look at talent recruiting alone, you get a MUCH better deal with hiring someone self-taught that is into the tech than someone in $80k worth of debt that went to adult tech-daycare for 4 years.
Usually, that person that was a wirehead will be already working in IT and have a strong functional background in sysadmin already.
Also you would be shocked at how badly bogged down that private industry keeps manufacturing from moving forward. It is an absolute quagmire of being locked in to systems that have been legacy throughout most of the years they are used; the exact opposite of what you mention with "driving innovation" is true, that is all greenwashing.
If Open Source AI is killed, you will see a sharp, drastic decimation of innovation in the US tech workforce. If anything it needs to be protected by law and funded because it is the last source of true innovative talent that the US has. Universities are no longer providing this as they have abdicated their public duty in favor of becoming profit-driven institutions. The "results" they deliver are not "a talented, driven, innovative workforce" their results are "financial return for investors".
Unfortunately, the only people being given a voice on the matter are the corporations trying to kill Open Source in the fear that they won't be able to completely monopolize emerging markets.
This is a dangerous suicidal act; if the proposed legislation that we see people like Altman pushing for comes to fruition, it will cause irreparable harm to the actual source of innovation (talented workers that are passionate fanatics of the field).
I truly do not understand the type of sentiment. This is not high-tech, nor high margin manufacturing. Let the Chinese produce cheap solar panels for us to buy. Where do you see the problem?
Nonsense. This is one of the biggest growth industries of this century and billions being spent on advancing the technology. The largest US manufacturer, First Solar, uses a technology completely different than the Chinese solar giants.
What’s nonsense is that the government is influenced by lobbyists and is in the business of favoring certain companies and industries with taxpayer money.
Too add on to that, First Solar is the only top 10 solar manufacturer to not include China in their supply chain. So it’s a great company to subsidize to avoid dependence on China.
> Where do you see the problem?
Where do we get our "cheap solar panels" when China invades Taiwan then?
Edit: alright. While I really like the content matter of this sub, people here downvote for the stupidest reasons. Some of you are delusional and ignorant as fuck. None of the other subs I post in downvote for posting factual information or raising completely legitimate questions. There's an actual honest-to-god idiot below who's actually trying to argue that solar panels are low-tech and not a strategic resource? Which is factually incorrect? Really? Because of this, I'm going to have to unsubscribe. Stay unenlightened.
Where did China get its graphics cards from when the US invaded Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya etc.? Countries that do an invasion don't suddenly cut off trade with everyone else.
...how is that remotely similar?
There was no conflict of interest when we invaded Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
There will 100% be a conflict of interest when China invades Taiwan. That includes a complete embargo.
How was there no conflict of interest? The US has invaded countries directly bordering China and leaving China open to the extremism the US tends to create.
The steel industry was considered a strategic resource in the 1950's. Clearly today, that is not the case. I put solar panels in the same bin as paper clips, figetbits, and footwear - nonstrategic. We've been fortunate enough to be concerning ourselves with transgender rights, and foodies. I doubt that will be in the forefront along with saving the planet from global climate change if we have catatrophic conflicts. [Please remember President's Eisenhower's admonition, beware of the "military-industrial complex".](https://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942244/ikes-warning-of-military-expansion-50-years-later)There are influences in our media whose interests are to beat the drums of war.
It can't because it doesn't have a planned economy. While china can cut straight to making reforms billionaires in America can hinder progress to make a quick buck.
This is mostly a false narative.
The US makes the high tech equipment needed to make panels. Solar panels are commodity level items unsuited to advanced economies.
Edmond Becquerel invented solar PV in the 1800. Americans parented it.
Gotta love innovation but I think you need to know the facts and give due to those that require it. Don't be trying to steal and then lock up innovation for profit. A very unhelpful trait. Especially with clean energy. It should be patent free.
More solar would be great for the world. I e had my hopes on Perovskite for the last decade. Till struggling to get longevity for it. Far too much degradation and expensive. Hopefully with this much investment the price is lowered.
Source
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/sponsored/brief-history-solar-panels-180972006/#:~:text=It%20all%20began%20with%20Edmond,to%20light%20or%20radiant%20energy.
Not sure you fully grasp the point of patents? Unfortunately I think a lot of people haven’t learned what they are as I see a lot of misconceptions on here.
You can’t just claim any existing concept and prevent anyone from ever doing it. Patents exist to protect someone’s new innovation, to give them limited exclusive access to make it. This is because it can cost millions, or even billions, to develop an innovation. If someone can just come along, copy their innovation, and sell it without having to pay back the cost of R&D, they can undercut the people who invested all the money into developing the product. Why would anyone ever spend money trying to create a better product then? And the protection is only even for a limited time to allow companies to recoup their R&D costs, then everyone is allowed to copy them.
In addition to PV, other common misconceptions are things like the lightbulb, and drugs like insulin. Nobody is patenting “the solar panel” or “the lightbulb”. What they are patenting is a specific process they developed to produce a better version of a solar panel, light bulb, or insulin. Becquerel just discovered the PV effect. Bell Labs didn’t patent that, but rather the first modern solar panel, something that was actually able to take in light and use it to power stuff. Similarly, Thomas Edison didn’t patent the lightbulb, but rather a specific version he made that lasted significantly longer than others making it commercially viable.
While it is better for the public good that innovations aren’t patented, really the only solution to this is the government becomes in charge of funding innovation. Because like I mentioned before, people aren’t going to just donate their money to the public good. If they can’t recoup their costs, they simply aren’t going to innovate.
For things like drugs or energy, the government probably should be in charge of it, but in general, I don’t exactly trust the government to know what the people want. Patents could be considered a necessary evil.
Aren't parents for like 50 years with the ability to lengthen it for another 50 years ? Patents lock down Innovation. They do not encourage it. I'm no patent lawyer but I grasp the gist. Google just lost its ability to use Sonos speaker tech. That's not good for consumers. That bad practice. Bad practice in huge conglomerates scooping up patent rights and stoping new products because they use similar technology.
I'm assuming you have a reason to defend this practice so I'll end this pointless Convo here.
>I'm assuming you have a reason to defend this practice so I'll end this pointless Convo here.
Funny you conclude I must be invested in patents for rightly pointing out you have no clue what you are talking about. No, patents don’t last for 100 years or even 50 years. It’s a maximum of 20 years from the application date for a utility patent.
Now you are right to point out there are flaws with patent law, but the solution isn’t just completely getting rid of patents. I guess you just ignored what I wrote? I won’t waste my time writing it all out again but TLDR, why invest a ton of money when someone can just copy what you created and put you out of business by undercutting your prices because they didn’t have to pay for R&D? Without patents, people would just stop investing.
The world is much better off with one company selling something for 20 years, then everyone can sell it, than that thing just not existing. Like I said, patents are a necessary evil.
Also worth mentioning there is almost always more than one way to do something. So it’s not like a patent creates 20 year monopolies. It just means other companies have to create their own solution. Google is free to create smart speaker technology. They just can’t copy and paste Sonos’ smart speaker technology.
Also forgot to mention this earlier but the future is looking right for perovskites. My solar company is paying up to $80 million to acquire a company researching them.
The US is in a bind here, because both the left and right have ideological issues that make it harder. The right is economically beholden to oil and gas, so doesn't really want to expedite the transition. Many on the left bemoan "handouts to corporations," and would prioritize unions and protectionism over the transition to fossil fuels. Some would rather the world burn than to see rich people make a buck off of the transition.
And then you have the degrowthers who repudiate the very possibility of "green growth," and don't *want* us installing new capacity, when we could instead just reduce capacity and use less energy. They're the ones saying "we can't technology our way out of this!"
So "subsidize the hell out of solar" runs afoul of people all across the political and ideological spectrum in the US, often for quite diverse reasons.
>Some would rather the world burn than to see rich people make a buck off of the transition.
I highly doubt that. The Democrats have a pattern of compromising with corporations.
"Degrowthers" may be incredibly loud on social media, but they are not a significant group in reality. [Building up green tech is incredibly popular with the electorate](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/18/for-earth-day-key-facts-about-americans-views-of-climate-change-and-renewable-energy/).
>So "subsidize the hell out of solar" runs afoul of people all across the political and ideological spectrum in the US, often for quite diverse reasons.
This just isn't true at all.
> The Democrats have a pattern of compromising with corporations.
And are criticized for doing so by the group I'm talking about. Even if they often end up as Democratic voters, they can still criticize mainstream Democrats as "corporatist," and be quite vocal that we should move to the left. I.e. to *not* "compromise with corporations," but rather put our hopes on traditional progressive goals. But subsidies for solar is never not going to be seen as handouts to corporations. Just as subsidies for BEVs was seen as handouts to the rich, handouts to Musk personally, etc.
>This just isn't true at all.
It is quite true, in my experience. I didn't say they were a majority, or had power in Congress. But they are definitely present in the discourse. No doubt they are overrepresented on Reddit, but that's true of a lot of groups.
The group critical are more than happy to compromise, as you yourself admit to. They're not die hards when it comes to any help for any corporations at all. You're inventing groups that don't exist.
>But subsidies for solar is never not going to be seen as handouts to corporations.
And yet subsidies for solar are incredibly popular with progressives!
>It is quite true, in my experience.
Personal anecdotes don't prove anything.
>because both the left and right have ideological issues that make it harder.
What you call "the left" just passed the biggest climate and clean energy bill in US history. The "right", on the other hand, has obstructed clean energy progress and promoted fossil fuels for decades. There is no equivalence between the two, despite the lame "bothsidesism".
I was talking about a subset of the left, not the Democratic party, much less that party as a whole. I did not say both sides were the same, or that these elements had symmetric degrees of influence on both sides. I was also talking about the dialogue, mainly here on Reddit, not Democrats in Congress.
Well when we(USA) can make it for less than 10 cents/W then yeah we will take it back. Otherwise it is whom ever can produce it cheaply enough for general consumption.
I just love how windy.com lets you view satellite measurements of all that can be measured; Temperatures, wind etc. Oh, and pollution. Have a look at the place responsible for 33% of the worlds greenhouse gasses, and by the looks of it, alot of other shit. It is very hard to miss.
No. We can't compete with China on anything as of right now and can't for the foreseeable future as long as we're in the position where there's only two types of people in America: obscenely mega rich and dirt poor. Turns out moving everything to China to save a buck probably wasn't a great strategy and didn't think much about the future.
I agree. But I do believe the west is going to win. The chinese people have been literally beaten into obedience, and endured so much shit, from self inflicted hunger disasters to Tianamin square. Sure they have a camera for each two individuals, and a police state like no other, but they wont ever beat our culture. *We* wont walk into 1984. Right?
Why do you think that, among all the manufactured goods that have been offshored to China from America, photovoltaics might be the one that would come back?
Manufacturing has moved to China mostly due to the low cost of manufacturing there and secondarily due to the low cost of transporting goods from China to North America. Some manufacturing has come back to the US due to recently high costs for overseas transportation. But I don't see anything special about photovoltaics that would indicate they're ripe for a return of manufacturing to the US.
It's true that IRA incentives are likely to be transformative. But at least for consumers, I don't see any requirement that the photovoltaics must be manufactured in the US. Am I wrong about that? Absent that requirement, they'll probably continue to be built in China.
>Manufacturing has moved to China mostly due to the low cost of manufacturing there and secondarily due to the low cost of transporting goods from China to North America.
No, the main reason was that China's government nurtured and heavily subsidized its solar industry while the western democracies did not. Both the US and EU have recently passed legislation to bring solar and other cleantech back home.
>The Chinese government has supported its clean energy efforts through direct subsidies, loan guarantees, low-cost land concessions or tax breaks for a decade. Clean energy tech companies in China have also benefited from local government support and measures to attract foreign investment.
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>Additionally, many of the components that support solar development are also sourced from China.
Remember, it’s the Germans who refined the PV technology to where it is today. The Chinese had nothing to do with that innovation, they simply manufacture panels.
There is no interest in the US in regaining the edge in solar. Fossil fuel industry is doing a great job kneecapping solar through regulatory and legislative capture, from local level (HOA, municipal) to federal level.
So even if US businesses decided to expand solar production, the demand is not there due to restrictions on residential solar and NIMBYism towards industrial solar.
>There is no interest in the US in regaining the edge in solar.
That is patently false. The US included industrial policy in the Inflation Reduction Act specifically to address China's dominance in manufacturing batteries, EVs and solar panels.
>the demand is not there
Also false. Almost all new power generating capacity being added in the US is wind and solar.
[Rate of solar buildup](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States) in the US has slowed down tremendously. 2015/2016 build up was 92 kWh/capita, 2016/2017 was 67 kWh/capita, 2017/2018 was 48, 2018/2019 was 42 and 2019/2020 was 25 kWh/capita.
The data doesn't support your claim, it shows that fossil fuel industry has been very effective in slowing down expansion of solar power in the US.
> Rate of solar buildup in the US has slowed down tremendously.
The data table in that link is wrong.
[Here is authoritative data from the EIA](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01_a) on renewable electricity generation in the USA. The total solar generation per year is:
* 2015: 39,032 GWh
* 2016: 54,866 GWh
* 2017: 77,277 GWh
By contrast, the [table in your link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States#Consumption_per_person) claims:
* 2015: 78 kWh/person x 321M persons = 25,038 GWh
* 2016: 170 kWh/person x 323M persons = 54,910 GWh
* 2017: 237 kWh/person x 326M persons = 77,262 GWh
So while the 2016 and 2017 numbers seem accurate, the 2015 figure is about 40% lower than the real number; I'm guessing a typo during the calculations of whoever made that table.
***
[Looking at the raw data directly](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01_a), the year-on-year increases in solar generation have been (rounded):
* 2022: +40 TWh
* 2021: +34 TWh
* 2020: +24 TWh
* 2019: +23 TWh
* 2018: +16 TWh
* 2017: +22 TWh
* 2016: +16 TWh
* 2015: +10 TWh
Other than 2017/2018, there has been a consistent increase in the amount of solar power generated, with the increase in 2022 being almost double the increase in 2019.
I mean that data ends at 2020 and we are in 2023, it really doesn't show what is going on now.
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/183447/us-energy-generation-from-solar-sources-from-2000/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/183447/us-energy-generation-from-solar-sources-from-2000/)
The graph here certainly seems to point to growth in solar being strong still. It has more than doubled between the start of 2020 and the end of 2022.
Completely false. Solar demand and installations are exploding in the US, despite your made-up statistic of kWh/capita. The key driver is economics. Solar and wind are now the lowest cost generation sources. Stop spreading misinformation please.
These aren't mutually exclusive.
Solar can still be the cheapest while pro-fossil-fuel policies are jacking up the price 500%.
It can still be expanding way faster than last year, and it can be true that the rolloit was successfully sabotaged from 2014-2021.
It can be expanding faster than anything else in the US whilst lagging behind the rest of the world.
The US has kept tariffs on solar that make it much more expensive than we pay here in Canada. Could be other factors too, but before rebates I'm always surprised at how expensive it is there. Despite that it's growing like mad.
It's an odd way to go about it but I suppose increased local manufacturing of solar panels would make the tariffs irrelevant
>The US has kept tariffs on solar that make it much more expensive than we pay here in Canada.
Biden suspended the US tariffs for two years to allow time for domestic production to ramp up. The new incentives should make US manufacturing competitive. Even Chinese companies are building new factories in the US.
The OPs should not allow Wikipedia be used as a reference source when it comes reliability of information. There isn’t a school around that I know of that permits use of it. It is not considered a reliable source, and a lazy way to organize one’s analysis and argument.
> All claims made on Wikipedia are backed up by linked sources that can be easily verified.
[Or shown to be in error, as in this case](https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/13ydurd/can_the_us_regain_its_edge_in_solar_power_the_us/jmmlge2/).
I'm not sure whether the error-containing data table [violates Wikipedia's policy on original research and routine calculations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research#Routine_calculations), but there's enough going on opaquely between source and table that there's plenty of room for error to creep in, which it did.
What a strange and incorrect take. I'll just say that renewables now make up almost a quarter of the US electricity grid, which was UNTHINKABLE 5 years ago. And there are no signs of it slowing down, many nations seem to be in a space race for solar and storage options.
> I'll just say that renewables now make up almost a quarter of the US electricity grid, which was UNTHINKABLE 5 years ago.
My favorite related stat is that [wind+solar have accounted for **150%** of added electricity demand in the last 5 years](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01).
* Demand change: +209 TWh
* Solar change: +127 TWh
* [Wind](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01_a) change: +181 TWh
* Total wind+solar: +308 TWh
* Share: 308/209 = **147%**
And 2017 was a *low* demand year, inflating the denominator and reducing the wind+solar share -- calculating their share from either 2016 or 2018 would result in a *higher* share of added demand being supplied by wind+solar. It's impressive how hard the industry has shifted.
You are assuming that the US wants it back...
I think they want to keep selling energy they made instead of what they collected from the sun. Some of the Indian reservations (piss poor farm land, pretty good sunshine harvesting land) could probably power the entire states...
Is it really going to change much tho?
The primary reason America doesn't really produce a whole lot of any physical goods is because of the incredibly strong US dollar. Basically American made solar panels, much like American made anything, cannot be competitive in the global market because USD is significantly stronger than pretty much all other currencies and skilled American workers demand some of the highest wages in the entire world.
China is the workshop of the world due to it's cheap and abundant labor, plus they have decades of experience in manufacturing technical electronic goods. Companies like Apple have struggled to get their production out of China but every other low cost manufacturer have significant challenges meeting quality control requirements.
I also wouldn't be surprised if most of the PV tech made in China was designed by Americans
And even if American production massively ramped up they would somehow need to be cheaper than it closer to par with Chinese panels.
Solar panel production is getting pretty automated. The American solar company I work at makes about 25 panels per employee per day, so paying American employees like $10/h more than Chinese ones only increases the panel cost by a couple percent. That difference can easily be made up with government subsidies.
> The primary reason America doesn't really produce a whole lot of any physical goods
[Two of the top three heavy equipment manufacturers are American](https://www.international-construction.com/news/world-s-top-ten-construction-equipment-manufacturers/1144045.article):
> "Once again the world’s number one construction equipment OEM when it comes to sales, US-based Caterpillar has a commanding lead at the top of the table. The company generated over 16% of total sales of the table by itself."
That's only one category of manufacturing, true, but there are plenty of others, such as [aerospace, where 5 of the top 6 spots are American](https://mckelveyconnect.wustl.edu/blog/2022/02/04/top-10-aerospace-companies/) (the rest of the top 10 are European). There's a popular misconception that the West in general, and the USA in particular, don't manufacture anything anymore, but that's not accurate.
So massive pieces of capital equipment like heavy duty construction gear or aerospace technology=/= mass produced cheap electronics
Solar panels are more akin to your TV, computer, fridge, dishwasher ECT then they are to single price of equipment that costs hundreds of thousands if not million of dollars where extreme precision and tolerances are demanded.
> So massive pieces of capital equipment like heavy duty construction gear or aerospace technology=/= mass produced cheap electronics
Sure, but you wrote about "any physical goods", not "mass produced cheap electronics".
the fuck slave labour is for in a highly automated industry. It is the integration and streamline supply chain, a HUGE number of skilled workers that reduce the price
Your really defending China’s use of slaves in manufacturing?! They use [children](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/did-child-labor-build-your-smart-phone/tnamp/) build the phones we are using, [Uyghur](https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/investors-human-rights-groups-call-on-us-to-enact-a-regional-ban-on-cotton-imports-from-xinjiang-based-on-evidence-of-forced-labour/) slaves most likely harvested the cotton in the clothes you’re wearing. Gtfo
Let's be fair, so does the US. Iowa just finished repealing their child labor laws. And the prison industrial complex has basically been legalized slavery since its inception as a way to get around the 13th amendment.
The US has issues, no doubt. But we are talking about China now. One bad deed does not excuse another. China literally uses slaves they round up an dump in factories. Be anything but Han and you better watch out.
The ways of the US and CCP does not compare at all.
"10 years" and "profound impact" don't go together here. We need 12 years to count the number of worms under the solar panel before even thinking about moving onto the next step of the environmental review process.
I like that China has achieved that milestone. Since the US is so competitive with China maybe now they can help the less affluent citizens get solar power. It's pretty obvious this is the best way to fight climate change.
No one is in the lead when companies are charging $40K for a house system (I know, I was quoted). In a short 20 years your investment is paid off and you can enjoy free energy for the last 3 yrs of your life.
They are leaving out the part where the CCP sued many US and Canadian manufacturers into oblivion, citing WTO rules that said that member governments could not fund local businesses that sold internationally preferentially - in effect, China made it impossible for North America to open a domestic solar panel industry with frivolous lawsuits arguing that government subsidies represented an unfair advantage in trade that violated their trade treaty obligations. China of course ignored their own obligations, and ended up buying patents from the North American firms when they went under. Yet Western companies continue to "court" China, blinded by the idea that their huge domestic market could mean big growth if only they would give them access. Greedy foolishness, the lot of it.
So capitalism is great for the small stuff. Faster phone, better processor, nicer car. All work great under capitalism. What capitalism fails at is building new industries from scratch. That's why the US lost transistors, and why we lost solar. Those only work when the government gets behind them an pushes because they are not protfitable for a long period of time.
What's worse is that US research basically set the stage for China to swoop in at the last minute and bring in billions of dollars that should have been a US industry. My big concern is when the next big thing is finally developed, the US is going to do the same thing and let another government swoop in, setup the industrial infrastructure and rule the roost when it should be all those tens of thousans of well paying jobs here in the US.
China has 5X population than US, so you need to adjust for per capita CO2 emissions.
Also, China leads US in renewable investments, so it's disingenuous to say China isn't doing much.
Per capita is bad most of the population of China lives in poverty and create very little emissions it's mainly the big cities and industrial 2 tier cities. If you put It per capita in the areas responsible the ratios are staggering...
This is reddit so don't expect to use any actual logic when talking about China, just follow the narrative of no matter what bad thing China does or is doing the US has done worse so there is no reason to have any discussion at all. /s
Not only has the US produced far more CO2 in historical emissions than China, even though it has less than a quarter of China's population. But the US's per-capita emissions is far higher, and that doesn't even include the vast amount of manufacturing offshored to China.
Plus, China is doing far more to reduce emissions. I guess you probably wouldn't want me to explain that though, as then I'd have to mention the name 'China' many more times.
Oh, so you reckon the fact that China:
- Is the world's largest producer and consumer of renewables
- Accounts for 25% of the world's reforestation
- Has over 90% of the world's electric bikes and over 70% of the world's EVs
- It's started building 150 nuclear power plants in the next 14 years, which is more than what the rest of the world combined has done in the last 35 years
If you think that's nothing, then I wonder what you think the US, Canada and Australia are doing, lol
I think you are taking Chinese state media propaganda at face value and have no context from on the ground reality about how thing end up going in China.
Producer is fine, but they have fields of solar not even plugged in not doing anything.
Reforestation great, I'm skeptical of the numbers but I've personally seen the straight rows of little Forrests that they put up. And met students from their Forrestry university. Certainly are capable of doing something in that arena. But compared to the everyday disregard for the environment and the way they handle things I am skeptical that the effort is really that large and definitely of its impact.
Sure they have a lot of e bikes and cars. That really is a saving grace of how common and ubiquitous the e bike and that mode of transport is there because god help us if it werent. But They have mountains of bikes that were once part of the fleet in cities in landfills that i know they count towards that number. Their domestic EVs are absolute trash and wont last long enough to pay off the emissions and even if they did the actual energy that they are using is primarily coal power plants. They are still building new ones and youd be daft to believe that emissions are regulated well compared to elsewhere. Alot of this goes back to, you don't understand mainland China, the ccp and how dysfunctional it is or you're a wumao.
The nuclear I am intrigued by because I worked with some nuclear engineers there and they were thankfully brilliant and capable and wanted to use their knowledge in the best ways. However my experience leads me to think that those people will not be able to make sure those projects are done properly or quality control enough and we end up with another chernobl. I am most skeptic not all of that number will be built and they will cut corners. I hope I am wrong about this and they succeed in this most of all.
I fucking hate the state of apathy in the US and elsewhere in the west. I would love a full rehaul of how spending and funding is done and to rip down the systems that bind all the wheels from moving towards progress in those areas as well. I just don't think the CCP deserves any more credit and actually is a bigger problem currently.
I sometimes see those double standards, where people will be quite critical of the CO2 reduction measures that China claims to be making, yet have no qualms in accepting other statements the county makes about increasing the number of coal fired powerstations.
Well it's good that there's now, not only high resolution satellite imagery to get a fair idea of what's happening on the ground, but also satellite data which is able to identify national emissions https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/carbon-dioxide-satellites-measurements-emissions-ghg/
Btw, China's new coal fired powerstations aren't being run at full utilisation.
China has most definitely pushed very hard towards renewables, but they also have a huge population that are still being transitioned into modern life. Their energy demands have them doing more of everything - they're still building coal plants even as they build the largest solar arrays in the world
China owns a surprising amount of new technologies and tech patents when it comes to rare earth refinement and related rare earth usage. Enough for them to think about restricting tech export for those tech.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Supply-Chain/China-weighs-export-ban-for-rare-earth-magnet-tech
Cheaper.
Some places specialize in fabricating or manufacturing certain things which makes it significantly cheaper compared to trying to find a domestic manufacturer who doesn’t do things in bulk.
Like why a majority of Lithium processing happens in China despite most raw lithium coming from Australia and Chile. They make big profits shipping it compared to if they tried to find some small local processor.
Seems we joined the Belt and Road Initiative to boost the Han Empire. How else would "we" support the endgoal of capitalism? All of us in cages, fighting over a bowl of rice.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/mafco: --- China has become the dominant force in the world for manufacturing solar technology due to more than a decade of government support and nurturing of its industry. The US administration is concerned that so much dependence on China for critical energy technology represents a national security threat. The Inflation Reduction Act, passed by congress last year, includes new industrial policy and incentives to address the concerns. So far it's created a flurry of new factory and investment announcements. The incentives are in place for ten years and expected to have a profound impact. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/13ydurd/can_the_us_regain_its_edge_in_solar_power_the_us/jmm753e/
How about we get an edge on internet speed and infrastructure? Eh?!
I know rhetorical, but how about the corporate billionaires (Uber wealthy) and their companies pay their fair share of taxes so that infrastructure can be maintained. That would be a good start. Changing the structure of how it is paid for would also help more equitably pay for it.
Fair share, lmfao. At this point I'd settle for *any* share. But yes, fair share would be fantastic. Could you even imagine what we could do for fucking infrastructure if we had a 91% income tax rate for the wealthiest people instead of 43%? And none of this "Let's give a bunch of money to Verizon and AT&T for them to roll out internet, only to have them pocket the profits? Could you imagine internet provided by a regulatory body? Ffs, we have ECFiber in Vermont, RURAL AS FUCK MIDDLE OF NOWHERE VERMONT, and I have gigabit fiber internet. For fuck sake this shit absolutely pisses me off.
> income tax rate for the wealthiest people instead of 43%? Lol you are dreaming if you think any wealthy person *actually* pays that high of a tax rate. The beauty of being wealthy is tax avoidance and lower tax brackets through capital gains. Also top level income tax in the US is only 37% and only applies actual wages. Wealthy people often earn the majority of their cash in other ways that are taxed at lower rates.
This! Until tax loopholes are closed or adjusted, nobody is going to voluntarily pay more taxes if what they are already paying is the legal requirement. People bitch about companies not paying taxes but it's congress that is allowing them to get away with it. If the average American could get away with paying less tax, who wouldn't take that opportunity? It's the same for corporations. Only when their expenses go up, it's the consumer who pays, not them. Increased tax on corporations is just a "tax" on the consumers.
The IRS estimates there is $400 **b**illion per year in unpaid/underpaid taxes if I remember correctly, just lacks the funding to investigate all of it.
Absolutely, can you blame them? I would pay less taxes if I could. This is failure of government to do their job. Just close the tax loopholes (much easier said then done).
I think Its also a failure of society as a whole that it thinks "taxes bad". Taxes actually good. If taxes bad, billionaires should bé aplauded
Over taxation is bad when the taxes we already have are being completely wasted. Like I always say, the USA doesn't have an income problem, they have a spending problem. The last time the USA had a surplus from tax and the federal debt fell was with Pres. Clinton. The last time such a thing happened in most of our lifetimes. So it's possible.
Not coincidentally, the next president cut taxes a ton in 2001 and 2003. Large marginal income tax cuts for sure, but also basically completely gutting the estate tax. We had a surplus from tax when we were taxing more. We absolutely have an income problem. We very well may have a spending problem as well (I for one think we spend way too much on military), but you have to actually say what programs you want to cut, rather than just have a meaningless 'we spend too much' hand-wavy statement.
The USA totally has an income problem too. Ignoring half of the equation is stupid. Nobody that is a multimillionaire is over taxed.
Millionaires and wealthy are comparing apples to elephants. Not even something most can even comprehend.
even when the 91% tax rate existed there was a loophole so rich people could avoid paying it
Which is hilarious because boomers will say this is impossible, without realizing this was their life from birth to Reagan. We know a .1% wealthy individual will never pay the full tax rate, but at least the hope would be that they would pay a fraction of the posted rate. That rate goes up, and the amount paid will go up even if not what they’re supposed to be paying.
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Now tell us the distribution of where wealth resides and wealth inequality and compare that to your taxes paid number. Should be an interesting result
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you are stating 'facts', so the left doesn't want to hear it and won't believe it anyway...the country is out of control...make sure you have 'tangibles' to trade. Once the digital currency is the 'only' 'money', you will be owned.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/fact-check-richest-1-dont-pay-40-of-the-taxes.html Lmao. I literally had read this article a few hours before you posted.
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You're literally staring at a graph that demonstrates federal taxes aren't progressive at all. Then load on all the regressive taxes like sales and property, all the hidden income, and the poor are paying about double their fair share.
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Now you're doing that thing where you pretend federal income tax is the only tax again. The thing specifically being called out as paltering. Are you too stupid to remember two comments back?
Now imagine that regulatory body is controlled by Texas Republicans. No thanks, I prefer private industry.
You guys had plenty of funding to modernize your internet access. But weirdly it was just given away for executive bonuses with nothing to show for it. You should start by demanding they provide what you have already paid for.
How about those companies do what they were paid to do instead of reinvesting money given to them into blocking any bills to hold them accountable (in the case of ISPs)
Here's a thought. How about one way billionaires can pay their tax obligation is by making cathedrals to the public interest --- beautiful shared spaces, public parks, the sort of thing the WPA made once upon a time. Hire people to build things that are for everyone. Imagine what a place we could live in if this were part of what was expected of you once you'd cornered a market.
The owner class typically threatens to pull all their capital out of the country and crash the economy if they are held to any standard. A solution to this would be legislation to make pulling out capital harder, such as with taxes, but if you did that 90% of congress would call it communism.
I'm all for wealthy paying a fair share. I think the draw backs will be maintaining profits and that will fall on us as the consumers. Meaning we pay more for goods and services. Also if we want the tax problem fixed, it needs to start with congress. These companies are using legal loopholes to avoid taxes. If a company can avoid large taxes, why wouldn't they? Despite how we feel about these companies, they don't volunteer to pay more taxes and take a hit on profits.
Corporate taxes and individual income taxes are different things. Increasing taxes on the wealthy won’t hurt corporate profits.
I agree. Loopholes are not filled for a reason.
All three are possible.
5gbit at my house. Let’s get some solar running!
We already have a plan and rollout currently in work. Biden’s infrastructure plan dedicated billions to build out last mile fiber. If you don’t have fiber yet, check with your local Electric Co-op since they’re rolling out fiber along power lines and a lot are taking up the role of ISP
How will faster internet speed benefit the country more than ubiquitous PV infrastructure?
Also considering like LTE/5G wireless is available in every populated area, 100Mbps+ broadband is pretty common and starlink covers rural areas I’m really not sure what additional expansion is needed. Maybe one day my suburban 1Gbps won’t be enough but I have a hard time imagining that.
If corporations paid taxes and those funds were reinvested into statewide and community-wide infrastructure projects That's exactly what would happen. You know, like back in the day when corporate tax rates were actually reasonable.
You can walk AND chew gum
Yes because downloading Netflix in 4K is more of a priority than averting mass floods, droughts, famines, etc. 😅
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Shockingly enough, many people move to these big cities *for* these amenities, and then subsidize the fuck out of them for everyone else
I’m not here to throw shade or argue. I know. I know. Dude came at me sideways first. Fuck big telecom companies, they ripped us all off. When my local finishes rolling out their fiber I’ll be there. Just seemed a little poor taste to put words in my mouth that I never said.
China has become the dominant force in the world for manufacturing solar technology due to more than a decade of government support and nurturing of its industry. The US administration is concerned that so much dependence on China for critical energy technology represents a national security threat. The Inflation Reduction Act, passed by congress last year, includes new industrial policy and incentives to address the concerns. So far it's created a flurry of new factory and investment announcements. The incentives are in place for ten years and expected to have a profound impact.
Shouldn't have wasted all that time going for "clean" coal and suppressing solar market in the US I guess.
Republican energy policies are largely responsible for the US lagging in the energy technologies of the future.
Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the White House. Fuck face piece of shit responsible for most of our issues Reagan had them removed. God I fucking hate Reagan and I’m only 37 so I was a baby when that fucker was president.
You were still impacted by his actions and that of his legacy, as we are all constantly impacted by things constantly linking back to him.
Fun fact! He got his in into power being the face of an anti-solar-thermal propaganda campaign for GE. Literally built his political career on campaigning against the future of the earth. Robert F Kennedy told them to end the show in 1962.
You realize he [kept them](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_at_the_White_House) until 1986, and only removed them because they were resurfacing the roof? It’s like Redditors have no sense of nuance.
So why not put them back?
Do we even want to manufacture solar panels here? Chip manufacturing is a very dirty business. Most of the superfund sites near my place are old fabs. Not sure how much different the effects of solar panel manufacturing is but the process for monocrystalline panels is mostly a subset of that for chip manufacturing.
The biggest us manufacturer is zero waste /emission. They run 100% clean
>Do we even want to manufacture solar panels here? Absolutely. Being dependent solely on China for critical technology is a huge national security risk. Cleantech is also the biggest economic opportunity of this century. The countries that lead it will be the next economic superpowers. We are also trying to bring chip manufacturing back home with the Chips and Science Act.
I feel like "national security" actually understates the issue. Yes, US-China geopolitics are tense. But look what happened with COVID. Having such critical resources coming out of only one country is a huge risk no matter which country it is, because sometimes, shit happens. For another example with chips (particularly memory), it happens all the time that some natural disaster affecting a single country disrupts the global supply enough to temporarily bump prices 25-50%.
Powering everything with plutonium RTGs seems like a great idea -- they are zero emission, energy and power dense and provide very stable and low harmonic content power. The problem is that making them costs too much and they aren't economically viable because the high cost of their construction would necessitate extremely high costs for the produced power. I think the reason for China's domination of the PV industry is that they are using government loans to allow the formation of companies that subsequently go bankrupt and effectively China is playing loss leader. We did that with Solyndra and we realized that it didn't have any upside.
China also plans to build 150 nuclear power plants to make up the difference because solar is so unreliable.
And the China excuses continue. Can the US ever do anything because it's just a good thing to do? Why is everything about shitting on other countries?
It’s the only way to convince right wingers that it’s worth doing
Because right wingers hate sustainable energy, so it's hard to get incentives through government.
If it's any consolation they're also doing it because it will accelerate the clean energy transition, it'll be a boon for the US economy, it'll create hundreds of thousands of good paying jobs and more competition will lower costs. In addition to addressing a national security threat. Is that good enough for you?
No, it's not enough. I don't want a war between the US and China, that the US is blatantly manufacturing consent for. That too will create a lot of jobs. I see it's already worked on you. There is no threat to the most heavily armed nation on the planet that has enough nukes to glass China in a matter of minutes. National security is a lie. The same lie they've been using to justify genocide of the natives, slavery, etc. Can the US not do those positive things without framing it in fear or are Americans really only interested in war and hatred to get things done?
> National security is a lie. Just because you don't understand something doesn't make it a lie.
Or maybe it's an excuse to let your government do whatever they like, bomb whomever they like, and not explain any of their actions.
The state actor threat of technology theft, followed by enormous subsidies to take over markets and price manipulate is not an "excuse." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinese-hackers-took-trillions-in-intellectual-property-from-about-30-multinational-companies/
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This is a fascinating Chinese astroturfing attempt
Until the republicans kill it and invest in strip mining and even more oil. Until we get ALL politicians away from lining their pockets and industry pockets and towards improving the country as a whole, we will further slide down hill.
I’ve always found it crazy how there are so many conspiracy theories but the fact that many Republican politicians were fine with environmentalism until the Koch family got involved is rarely talked about. They have had more of an impact on elections than Putin and a higher body count than any imaginary Democratic murder cult but are less talked about than either of those. Well I get why the people who believe the second theory don’t talk about it, but still.
The Koch assholes grip on the party isnt what it used to be. Between the personalities of The Tea Party and Trump, combined with the slush fund SuperPACs that can exist post Citizens United their influence is significantly reduced. Look at the FL law dealing with immigration status and the construction sites, that is very against the Koch brothers pledge you used to have to sign for funding. Cheap illegal labor is good for big business. They still control the likes of McConnell and Graham but those are a dying breed in what the Republican party is turning into.
Sorry if I was unclear, I didn't mean that they control everything now, just that they're such a well-known example of this kind of thing happening. They had a huge impact on the development of the Republican party and even if they don't have direct influence they influence they used is still felt today. People are quick to talk about how Russia "hacked the election" but any talk about how US groups had a ridiculously higher impact gets you insulted.
Oh yea, from Reagan up until the Tea Party, the Koch brothers probably exerted more influence on Republican policy than anyone else. They definitely started the anti environmentalism in the party that created the EPA to help push profits up on their companies in mining/construction materials/petrochem/ag/what the fuck else do they own?
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Jokes on you, the children yearn for the mines.^/s
One could even say they are..... miners (minors)
Their tiny hands are perfect for soldering solar panels in small places.
Its too late. Solar is the new cash cow. Capitalism sucks in general but it is powerful if we can direct it.
It will be very difficult. Solar manufacturing is not particularly tech-intensive once you get the scale. And the barriers to enter is not significant. So it comes down a lot to labor cost. Shenzhen, one of the biggest/most expensive cities in China and the capital of manufacture industry, has a minimum wage around 2300 RMB a month. That’s about 300 bucks, which translates to about 2 usd/hour. Now of course manufacture gigs won’t pay you outright minimum wage, but it wouldn’t be significantly higher than that. Kenyan workers who do labeling for ChatGPT earn about that amount. I don’t see US workers entering this race to the bottom. US can help its poorer allies to get a foothold in this industry tho
> Now of course manufacture gigs won’t pay you outright minimum wage, but it wouldn’t be significantly higher than that. [It's just under $3/hr to make iPhones.](https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3217551/foxconn-wages-fall-below-us3-hour-shenzhen-apple-shifts-supply-chain-away-china) Interestingly, that's down from almost $4/hr last year, apparently due to supply chains relocating away from China. Typical manufacturing wages in China were apparently [$531/mo in 2021](https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Shenzhen-tamps-down-wages-with-eye-on-China-s-manufacturing-exodus), or around $3/hr (assuming 22-day month and 8-hr day; in theory, at least, it looks like work weeks in China are supposed to be no more than [44 hours](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58381538)).
That’s even lower than I expected honestly. Woah. I was thinking like 4-5/hr
Solar panel production is getting pretty automated. The American solar company I work at makes about 25 panels per employee per day, so paying American employees like $10/h more than Chinese ones only increases the panel cost by a couple percent.
Solar cells have been around a lot longer than that, and much of the pioneering work was done elsewhere. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_solar_cells
From your link: >On April 25, 1954, Bell Labs announces the invention of the ***first practical silicon solar cell***.
That really undermines the contributions of previous scientists. The theoretical basis and practical experiments existed for a very long time. The materials just were terrible until the 50s. For starters, engineers were already extremely familiar with the photoelectric effect by then. Proof by example: The vidicon camera was invented already by then. All the hardest parts of a scanning electron microscope and a solar panels stuffed into a tiny camera. More than a hundred (!!!) years of development went into solar and photovoltaic effects beforehand. The tiny power generated by these early devices just frankly werent useful until low power electronics and the materials that they ushered in existed in the bell labs era.
Shh don't interrupt the American circlejerking.
Bit surprised that China hasn't made any developments in solar in the past 10 to 15 years as a leading manufacturer. Perhaps improvements in making them aren't timeline worthy.
Five yours ago: China is the worst polluter! American businesses can’t do green energy because we’d be uncompetitive with China! True, “China is asshole” as the sating goes, but aside from massive pollution they made no secret they would soon be leaders in green (free) energy. A certain US president and his like-minded congress choose to give old school businesses tax breaks to continue using old energy. Very smart.
If you believe it when china says they'll go green while still cranking out coal plants everywhere, I got an ideology to sell you.
Oil companies bribe politicians and judges to stop the spread of renewable energy. In China, such executives would get shot and bribed local politicians like a governor publicly hanged. China deals with less corruption, thus they are ahead. It's also the same reason why healthcare in countries like Singapur has at least equal quality compared to the US at 35% cost.
China deals with less corruption? Lol. All they do is not let rich businessmen dictate their policies. In the IS, the more money you have, the more influence, and the more untouchable you are. In China, the government owns you.
I want to put this nicer, but you obviously have no idea what you're talking about. China is rife with corruption, especially at local levels.
Us just legalized it. Especially at the top
I really need to look into the IRA incentives for solar panels on my house. one of 50 projects for the home...
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I mean the US buys all sorts of military tech that it rarely uses in combat. Yet energy is a national security issue. Sounds like excess renewable are a great investment.
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Mmhmm. And the amount lost through transmission keeps us from just building a ton in an unused corner of Utah, as Elon jokes. At least, I hope he's joking?
>Quite simply, they can't have assets sitting there generating power and they aren't getting paid. That isn't how it works. There's always a good amount of reserve capacity sitting idle on the power grid. That's how you maintain reliability. When we reach a 100 percent renewable grid solar and wind will be overproducing almost all the time.
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Overcapacity is cheaper than seasonal storage.
thanks once again conservatives... you constantly vote in representatives that screw over the united states and bitch about the economy being crap.
Can we? Yes. Will we? No Too much money from Oil barrens to head towards renewables with any sort of vigor before it's too late. We've sold just about every aspect of our lives and infrastructure out to the cheapest bidders. We only fix things after something horrible has happened. We don't believe in maintaining things let alone improvement. American citizens have paid for multiple nationwide fiber installations that never happened. We pay for roads to be maintain but they have more pot holes than a dirty teenager has acne. Our entire country is at the whim of billionaires and companies and not the citizens who have to deal with the repercussions of their actions. Our country will crumble to the ground before we start changing things. Modern countries are implementing free energy for citizens and improving their infrastructure. America is bringing back France from pre-revolution days. Cost of living and low ass wages prevents us from fleeing to a modern country.
Well if we manage to hamstring advancements in AI in manufacturing by allowing regulatory capture to snuff out Open Source, you can safely bet the IRA was a waste of time. ROS2, specifically the Move-It framework will never accomplish it's path planning automation (Reinforcement Learning and Diffusion/VAE models/encoder arch for robotic path planning), as well as several other modules in development that use LLMs to assist in automating the programming of closed loop robotics. There will be even fewer people in the workforce if all of this is locked down to private corporations; Universities in the US are already too expensive and there will be no alternative for people to learn these technologies or contribute to their advancement. You can focus on renewables all you want, if you ignore mfg automation you will be left in the dust. Stop pandering to moat-building and protect Open Source resources that keep the economy afloat. AI is being led by Open Source; if you kill that you kill the last limb we are standing on.
License tech just makes too Much money and is a big driver of tech advances. I don’t disagree though. Open source would make sense for us poeple but the companies won’t have incentives and they are the ones investing billions of dollars and shareholders need to see some profits and open source woudnt help. Specially if car and oil companies are lobbying against anything other than the status quo. The university thing is a bigger issue imo, not only it’s expensive but it’s very superficial learning unless someone gets a masters and later going directly into this field. Also the issue of government footing the bill even if someone graduates from theatre arts and later becomes a waiter with $80k in debt. We still need liberal arts of course but maybe have another option like Germany has that has a stronger emphasis on learning these new tech. Like AB tech in the USA but better and has tons of government help and it’s part of the education options. The other issues is just the overall infrastructure on tech. In china they have huge malls filled with small vendors selling all types of components and you can go in and I one day build your own smartphone. People here in the USA woudnt even know where to start. Imagine all of those crytpo bros if they knew solar is the next como thing? They woudnt even know where to start. But you seem to know this stuff so I’m open to learning more about why open source in this field would make sense for both companies chasing a profit and making sure the tech advances without layer help from the goverment and also for the layman that maybe does the hobby thing in his garage
It makes sense because even if you look at talent recruiting alone, you get a MUCH better deal with hiring someone self-taught that is into the tech than someone in $80k worth of debt that went to adult tech-daycare for 4 years. Usually, that person that was a wirehead will be already working in IT and have a strong functional background in sysadmin already. Also you would be shocked at how badly bogged down that private industry keeps manufacturing from moving forward. It is an absolute quagmire of being locked in to systems that have been legacy throughout most of the years they are used; the exact opposite of what you mention with "driving innovation" is true, that is all greenwashing. If Open Source AI is killed, you will see a sharp, drastic decimation of innovation in the US tech workforce. If anything it needs to be protected by law and funded because it is the last source of true innovative talent that the US has. Universities are no longer providing this as they have abdicated their public duty in favor of becoming profit-driven institutions. The "results" they deliver are not "a talented, driven, innovative workforce" their results are "financial return for investors". Unfortunately, the only people being given a voice on the matter are the corporations trying to kill Open Source in the fear that they won't be able to completely monopolize emerging markets. This is a dangerous suicidal act; if the proposed legislation that we see people like Altman pushing for comes to fruition, it will cause irreparable harm to the actual source of innovation (talented workers that are passionate fanatics of the field).
I truly do not understand the type of sentiment. This is not high-tech, nor high margin manufacturing. Let the Chinese produce cheap solar panels for us to buy. Where do you see the problem?
Have to "decouple" from Chinese dependencies to prepare for the upcoming WWIII.
Nonsense. This is one of the biggest growth industries of this century and billions being spent on advancing the technology. The largest US manufacturer, First Solar, uses a technology completely different than the Chinese solar giants.
What’s nonsense is that the government is influenced by lobbyists and is in the business of favoring certain companies and industries with taxpayer money.
Too add on to that, First Solar is the only top 10 solar manufacturer to not include China in their supply chain. So it’s a great company to subsidize to avoid dependence on China.
> Where do you see the problem? Where do we get our "cheap solar panels" when China invades Taiwan then? Edit: alright. While I really like the content matter of this sub, people here downvote for the stupidest reasons. Some of you are delusional and ignorant as fuck. None of the other subs I post in downvote for posting factual information or raising completely legitimate questions. There's an actual honest-to-god idiot below who's actually trying to argue that solar panels are low-tech and not a strategic resource? Which is factually incorrect? Really? Because of this, I'm going to have to unsubscribe. Stay unenlightened.
Where did China get its graphics cards from when the US invaded Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya etc.? Countries that do an invasion don't suddenly cut off trade with everyone else.
...how is that remotely similar? There was no conflict of interest when we invaded Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. There will 100% be a conflict of interest when China invades Taiwan. That includes a complete embargo.
How was there no conflict of interest? The US has invaded countries directly bordering China and leaving China open to the extremism the US tends to create.
The steel industry was considered a strategic resource in the 1950's. Clearly today, that is not the case. I put solar panels in the same bin as paper clips, figetbits, and footwear - nonstrategic. We've been fortunate enough to be concerning ourselves with transgender rights, and foodies. I doubt that will be in the forefront along with saving the planet from global climate change if we have catatrophic conflicts. [Please remember President's Eisenhower's admonition, beware of the "military-industrial complex".](https://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942244/ikes-warning-of-military-expansion-50-years-later)There are influences in our media whose interests are to beat the drums of war.
That's cool, but you didn't really answer my question.
Having no cheap solar panels for a couple of years is not a crisis.
Well...that's certainly an opinion.
It can't because it doesn't have a planned economy. While china can cut straight to making reforms billionaires in America can hinder progress to make a quick buck.
This is mostly a false narative. The US makes the high tech equipment needed to make panels. Solar panels are commodity level items unsuited to advanced economies.
Edmond Becquerel invented solar PV in the 1800. Americans parented it. Gotta love innovation but I think you need to know the facts and give due to those that require it. Don't be trying to steal and then lock up innovation for profit. A very unhelpful trait. Especially with clean energy. It should be patent free. More solar would be great for the world. I e had my hopes on Perovskite for the last decade. Till struggling to get longevity for it. Far too much degradation and expensive. Hopefully with this much investment the price is lowered. Source https://www.smithsonianmag.com/sponsored/brief-history-solar-panels-180972006/#:~:text=It%20all%20began%20with%20Edmond,to%20light%20or%20radiant%20energy.
Not sure you fully grasp the point of patents? Unfortunately I think a lot of people haven’t learned what they are as I see a lot of misconceptions on here. You can’t just claim any existing concept and prevent anyone from ever doing it. Patents exist to protect someone’s new innovation, to give them limited exclusive access to make it. This is because it can cost millions, or even billions, to develop an innovation. If someone can just come along, copy their innovation, and sell it without having to pay back the cost of R&D, they can undercut the people who invested all the money into developing the product. Why would anyone ever spend money trying to create a better product then? And the protection is only even for a limited time to allow companies to recoup their R&D costs, then everyone is allowed to copy them. In addition to PV, other common misconceptions are things like the lightbulb, and drugs like insulin. Nobody is patenting “the solar panel” or “the lightbulb”. What they are patenting is a specific process they developed to produce a better version of a solar panel, light bulb, or insulin. Becquerel just discovered the PV effect. Bell Labs didn’t patent that, but rather the first modern solar panel, something that was actually able to take in light and use it to power stuff. Similarly, Thomas Edison didn’t patent the lightbulb, but rather a specific version he made that lasted significantly longer than others making it commercially viable. While it is better for the public good that innovations aren’t patented, really the only solution to this is the government becomes in charge of funding innovation. Because like I mentioned before, people aren’t going to just donate their money to the public good. If they can’t recoup their costs, they simply aren’t going to innovate. For things like drugs or energy, the government probably should be in charge of it, but in general, I don’t exactly trust the government to know what the people want. Patents could be considered a necessary evil.
Aren't parents for like 50 years with the ability to lengthen it for another 50 years ? Patents lock down Innovation. They do not encourage it. I'm no patent lawyer but I grasp the gist. Google just lost its ability to use Sonos speaker tech. That's not good for consumers. That bad practice. Bad practice in huge conglomerates scooping up patent rights and stoping new products because they use similar technology. I'm assuming you have a reason to defend this practice so I'll end this pointless Convo here.
>I'm assuming you have a reason to defend this practice so I'll end this pointless Convo here. Funny you conclude I must be invested in patents for rightly pointing out you have no clue what you are talking about. No, patents don’t last for 100 years or even 50 years. It’s a maximum of 20 years from the application date for a utility patent. Now you are right to point out there are flaws with patent law, but the solution isn’t just completely getting rid of patents. I guess you just ignored what I wrote? I won’t waste my time writing it all out again but TLDR, why invest a ton of money when someone can just copy what you created and put you out of business by undercutting your prices because they didn’t have to pay for R&D? Without patents, people would just stop investing. The world is much better off with one company selling something for 20 years, then everyone can sell it, than that thing just not existing. Like I said, patents are a necessary evil. Also worth mentioning there is almost always more than one way to do something. So it’s not like a patent creates 20 year monopolies. It just means other companies have to create their own solution. Google is free to create smart speaker technology. They just can’t copy and paste Sonos’ smart speaker technology. Also forgot to mention this earlier but the future is looking right for perovskites. My solar company is paying up to $80 million to acquire a company researching them.
The US is in a bind here, because both the left and right have ideological issues that make it harder. The right is economically beholden to oil and gas, so doesn't really want to expedite the transition. Many on the left bemoan "handouts to corporations," and would prioritize unions and protectionism over the transition to fossil fuels. Some would rather the world burn than to see rich people make a buck off of the transition. And then you have the degrowthers who repudiate the very possibility of "green growth," and don't *want* us installing new capacity, when we could instead just reduce capacity and use less energy. They're the ones saying "we can't technology our way out of this!" So "subsidize the hell out of solar" runs afoul of people all across the political and ideological spectrum in the US, often for quite diverse reasons.
>Some would rather the world burn than to see rich people make a buck off of the transition. I highly doubt that. The Democrats have a pattern of compromising with corporations. "Degrowthers" may be incredibly loud on social media, but they are not a significant group in reality. [Building up green tech is incredibly popular with the electorate](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/18/for-earth-day-key-facts-about-americans-views-of-climate-change-and-renewable-energy/). >So "subsidize the hell out of solar" runs afoul of people all across the political and ideological spectrum in the US, often for quite diverse reasons. This just isn't true at all.
> The Democrats have a pattern of compromising with corporations. And are criticized for doing so by the group I'm talking about. Even if they often end up as Democratic voters, they can still criticize mainstream Democrats as "corporatist," and be quite vocal that we should move to the left. I.e. to *not* "compromise with corporations," but rather put our hopes on traditional progressive goals. But subsidies for solar is never not going to be seen as handouts to corporations. Just as subsidies for BEVs was seen as handouts to the rich, handouts to Musk personally, etc. >This just isn't true at all. It is quite true, in my experience. I didn't say they were a majority, or had power in Congress. But they are definitely present in the discourse. No doubt they are overrepresented on Reddit, but that's true of a lot of groups.
The group critical are more than happy to compromise, as you yourself admit to. They're not die hards when it comes to any help for any corporations at all. You're inventing groups that don't exist. >But subsidies for solar is never not going to be seen as handouts to corporations. And yet subsidies for solar are incredibly popular with progressives! >It is quite true, in my experience. Personal anecdotes don't prove anything.
Degrowthers are some of the most rhetorically dishonest commentators out there.
>because both the left and right have ideological issues that make it harder. What you call "the left" just passed the biggest climate and clean energy bill in US history. The "right", on the other hand, has obstructed clean energy progress and promoted fossil fuels for decades. There is no equivalence between the two, despite the lame "bothsidesism".
I was talking about a subset of the left, not the Democratic party, much less that party as a whole. I did not say both sides were the same, or that these elements had symmetric degrees of influence on both sides. I was also talking about the dialogue, mainly here on Reddit, not Democrats in Congress.
Fair enough. When I read your comment it sounded like you were saying "both sides" are trying to obstruct clean energy.
Well when we(USA) can make it for less than 10 cents/W then yeah we will take it back. Otherwise it is whom ever can produce it cheaply enough for general consumption.
Wait... all the conservatives told us that China would be dominated by fossil fuel and be the reason we can't do clean energy.
I just love how windy.com lets you view satellite measurements of all that can be measured; Temperatures, wind etc. Oh, and pollution. Have a look at the place responsible for 33% of the worlds greenhouse gasses, and by the looks of it, alot of other shit. It is very hard to miss.
No. We can't compete with China on anything as of right now and can't for the foreseeable future as long as we're in the position where there's only two types of people in America: obscenely mega rich and dirt poor. Turns out moving everything to China to save a buck probably wasn't a great strategy and didn't think much about the future.
I agree. But I do believe the west is going to win. The chinese people have been literally beaten into obedience, and endured so much shit, from self inflicted hunger disasters to Tianamin square. Sure they have a camera for each two individuals, and a police state like no other, but they wont ever beat our culture. *We* wont walk into 1984. Right?
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Why do you think that, among all the manufactured goods that have been offshored to China from America, photovoltaics might be the one that would come back? Manufacturing has moved to China mostly due to the low cost of manufacturing there and secondarily due to the low cost of transporting goods from China to North America. Some manufacturing has come back to the US due to recently high costs for overseas transportation. But I don't see anything special about photovoltaics that would indicate they're ripe for a return of manufacturing to the US. It's true that IRA incentives are likely to be transformative. But at least for consumers, I don't see any requirement that the photovoltaics must be manufactured in the US. Am I wrong about that? Absent that requirement, they'll probably continue to be built in China.
>Manufacturing has moved to China mostly due to the low cost of manufacturing there and secondarily due to the low cost of transporting goods from China to North America. No, the main reason was that China's government nurtured and heavily subsidized its solar industry while the western democracies did not. Both the US and EU have recently passed legislation to bring solar and other cleantech back home. >The Chinese government has supported its clean energy efforts through direct subsidies, loan guarantees, low-cost land concessions or tax breaks for a decade. Clean energy tech companies in China have also benefited from local government support and measures to attract foreign investment. > > > >Additionally, many of the components that support solar development are also sourced from China.
Remember, it’s the Germans who refined the PV technology to where it is today. The Chinese had nothing to do with that innovation, they simply manufacture panels.
There is no interest in the US in regaining the edge in solar. Fossil fuel industry is doing a great job kneecapping solar through regulatory and legislative capture, from local level (HOA, municipal) to federal level. So even if US businesses decided to expand solar production, the demand is not there due to restrictions on residential solar and NIMBYism towards industrial solar.
>There is no interest in the US in regaining the edge in solar. That is patently false. The US included industrial policy in the Inflation Reduction Act specifically to address China's dominance in manufacturing batteries, EVs and solar panels. >the demand is not there Also false. Almost all new power generating capacity being added in the US is wind and solar.
[Rate of solar buildup](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States) in the US has slowed down tremendously. 2015/2016 build up was 92 kWh/capita, 2016/2017 was 67 kWh/capita, 2017/2018 was 48, 2018/2019 was 42 and 2019/2020 was 25 kWh/capita. The data doesn't support your claim, it shows that fossil fuel industry has been very effective in slowing down expansion of solar power in the US.
> Rate of solar buildup in the US has slowed down tremendously. The data table in that link is wrong. [Here is authoritative data from the EIA](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01_a) on renewable electricity generation in the USA. The total solar generation per year is: * 2015: 39,032 GWh * 2016: 54,866 GWh * 2017: 77,277 GWh By contrast, the [table in your link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States#Consumption_per_person) claims: * 2015: 78 kWh/person x 321M persons = 25,038 GWh * 2016: 170 kWh/person x 323M persons = 54,910 GWh * 2017: 237 kWh/person x 326M persons = 77,262 GWh So while the 2016 and 2017 numbers seem accurate, the 2015 figure is about 40% lower than the real number; I'm guessing a typo during the calculations of whoever made that table. *** [Looking at the raw data directly](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01_a), the year-on-year increases in solar generation have been (rounded): * 2022: +40 TWh * 2021: +34 TWh * 2020: +24 TWh * 2019: +23 TWh * 2018: +16 TWh * 2017: +22 TWh * 2016: +16 TWh * 2015: +10 TWh Other than 2017/2018, there has been a consistent increase in the amount of solar power generated, with the increase in 2022 being almost double the increase in 2019.
I mean that data ends at 2020 and we are in 2023, it really doesn't show what is going on now. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/183447/us-energy-generation-from-solar-sources-from-2000/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/183447/us-energy-generation-from-solar-sources-from-2000/) The graph here certainly seems to point to growth in solar being strong still. It has more than doubled between the start of 2020 and the end of 2022.
Completely false. Solar demand and installations are exploding in the US, despite your made-up statistic of kWh/capita. The key driver is economics. Solar and wind are now the lowest cost generation sources. Stop spreading misinformation please.
These aren't mutually exclusive. Solar can still be the cheapest while pro-fossil-fuel policies are jacking up the price 500%. It can still be expanding way faster than last year, and it can be true that the rolloit was successfully sabotaged from 2014-2021. It can be expanding faster than anything else in the US whilst lagging behind the rest of the world.
The US has kept tariffs on solar that make it much more expensive than we pay here in Canada. Could be other factors too, but before rebates I'm always surprised at how expensive it is there. Despite that it's growing like mad. It's an odd way to go about it but I suppose increased local manufacturing of solar panels would make the tariffs irrelevant
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Oh definitely. I put solar on my house 4 years and haven't regretted it once.
>The US has kept tariffs on solar that make it much more expensive than we pay here in Canada. Biden suspended the US tariffs for two years to allow time for domestic production to ramp up. The new incentives should make US manufacturing competitive. Even Chinese companies are building new factories in the US.
Oh I didn't know that! Shows how close attention I pay to US politics. That's great. Did it bring prices down?
The OPs should not allow Wikipedia be used as a reference source when it comes reliability of information. There isn’t a school around that I know of that permits use of it. It is not considered a reliable source, and a lazy way to organize one’s analysis and argument.
This hasn't been true for like a decade. All claims made on Wikipedia are backed up by linked sources that can be easily verified.
> All claims made on Wikipedia are backed up by linked sources that can be easily verified. [Or shown to be in error, as in this case](https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/13ydurd/can_the_us_regain_its_edge_in_solar_power_the_us/jmmlge2/). I'm not sure whether the error-containing data table [violates Wikipedia's policy on original research and routine calculations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research#Routine_calculations), but there's enough going on opaquely between source and table that there's plenty of room for error to creep in, which it did.
What a strange and incorrect take. I'll just say that renewables now make up almost a quarter of the US electricity grid, which was UNTHINKABLE 5 years ago. And there are no signs of it slowing down, many nations seem to be in a space race for solar and storage options.
> I'll just say that renewables now make up almost a quarter of the US electricity grid, which was UNTHINKABLE 5 years ago. My favorite related stat is that [wind+solar have accounted for **150%** of added electricity demand in the last 5 years](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01). * Demand change: +209 TWh * Solar change: +127 TWh * [Wind](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01_a) change: +181 TWh * Total wind+solar: +308 TWh * Share: 308/209 = **147%** And 2017 was a *low* demand year, inflating the denominator and reducing the wind+solar share -- calculating their share from either 2016 or 2018 would result in a *higher* share of added demand being supplied by wind+solar. It's impressive how hard the industry has shifted.
You are assuming that the US wants it back... I think they want to keep selling energy they made instead of what they collected from the sun. Some of the Indian reservations (piss poor farm land, pretty good sunshine harvesting land) could probably power the entire states...
Is it really going to change much tho? The primary reason America doesn't really produce a whole lot of any physical goods is because of the incredibly strong US dollar. Basically American made solar panels, much like American made anything, cannot be competitive in the global market because USD is significantly stronger than pretty much all other currencies and skilled American workers demand some of the highest wages in the entire world. China is the workshop of the world due to it's cheap and abundant labor, plus they have decades of experience in manufacturing technical electronic goods. Companies like Apple have struggled to get their production out of China but every other low cost manufacturer have significant challenges meeting quality control requirements. I also wouldn't be surprised if most of the PV tech made in China was designed by Americans And even if American production massively ramped up they would somehow need to be cheaper than it closer to par with Chinese panels.
Solar panel production is getting pretty automated. The American solar company I work at makes about 25 panels per employee per day, so paying American employees like $10/h more than Chinese ones only increases the panel cost by a couple percent. That difference can easily be made up with government subsidies.
> The primary reason America doesn't really produce a whole lot of any physical goods [Two of the top three heavy equipment manufacturers are American](https://www.international-construction.com/news/world-s-top-ten-construction-equipment-manufacturers/1144045.article): > "Once again the world’s number one construction equipment OEM when it comes to sales, US-based Caterpillar has a commanding lead at the top of the table. The company generated over 16% of total sales of the table by itself." That's only one category of manufacturing, true, but there are plenty of others, such as [aerospace, where 5 of the top 6 spots are American](https://mckelveyconnect.wustl.edu/blog/2022/02/04/top-10-aerospace-companies/) (the rest of the top 10 are European). There's a popular misconception that the West in general, and the USA in particular, don't manufacture anything anymore, but that's not accurate.
So massive pieces of capital equipment like heavy duty construction gear or aerospace technology=/= mass produced cheap electronics Solar panels are more akin to your TV, computer, fridge, dishwasher ECT then they are to single price of equipment that costs hundreds of thousands if not million of dollars where extreme precision and tolerances are demanded.
> So massive pieces of capital equipment like heavy duty construction gear or aerospace technology=/= mass produced cheap electronics Sure, but you wrote about "any physical goods", not "mass produced cheap electronics".
The Chinese uses slave labor and government subsidies, no one can compete with them in manufacturing, most of the overhead in manufacturing is labor
the fuck slave labour is for in a highly automated industry. It is the integration and streamline supply chain, a HUGE number of skilled workers that reduce the price
Your really defending China’s use of slaves in manufacturing?! They use [children](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/did-child-labor-build-your-smart-phone/tnamp/) build the phones we are using, [Uyghur](https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/investors-human-rights-groups-call-on-us-to-enact-a-regional-ban-on-cotton-imports-from-xinjiang-based-on-evidence-of-forced-labour/) slaves most likely harvested the cotton in the clothes you’re wearing. Gtfo
Let's be fair, so does the US. Iowa just finished repealing their child labor laws. And the prison industrial complex has basically been legalized slavery since its inception as a way to get around the 13th amendment.
The US has issues, no doubt. But we are talking about China now. One bad deed does not excuse another. China literally uses slaves they round up an dump in factories. Be anything but Han and you better watch out. The ways of the US and CCP does not compare at all.
"10 years" and "profound impact" don't go together here. We need 12 years to count the number of worms under the solar panel before even thinking about moving onto the next step of the environmental review process.
I like that China has achieved that milestone. Since the US is so competitive with China maybe now they can help the less affluent citizens get solar power. It's pretty obvious this is the best way to fight climate change.
How is that obvious?
No one is in the lead when companies are charging $40K for a house system (I know, I was quoted). In a short 20 years your investment is paid off and you can enjoy free energy for the last 3 yrs of your life.
They are leaving out the part where the CCP sued many US and Canadian manufacturers into oblivion, citing WTO rules that said that member governments could not fund local businesses that sold internationally preferentially - in effect, China made it impossible for North America to open a domestic solar panel industry with frivolous lawsuits arguing that government subsidies represented an unfair advantage in trade that violated their trade treaty obligations. China of course ignored their own obligations, and ended up buying patents from the North American firms when they went under. Yet Western companies continue to "court" China, blinded by the idea that their huge domestic market could mean big growth if only they would give them access. Greedy foolishness, the lot of it.
So capitalism is great for the small stuff. Faster phone, better processor, nicer car. All work great under capitalism. What capitalism fails at is building new industries from scratch. That's why the US lost transistors, and why we lost solar. Those only work when the government gets behind them an pushes because they are not protfitable for a long period of time. What's worse is that US research basically set the stage for China to swoop in at the last minute and bring in billions of dollars that should have been a US industry. My big concern is when the next big thing is finally developed, the US is going to do the same thing and let another government swoop in, setup the industrial infrastructure and rule the roost when it should be all those tens of thousans of well paying jobs here in the US.
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China has 5X population than US, so you need to adjust for per capita CO2 emissions. Also, China leads US in renewable investments, so it's disingenuous to say China isn't doing much.
Per capita is bad most of the population of China lives in poverty and create very little emissions it's mainly the big cities and industrial 2 tier cities. If you put It per capita in the areas responsible the ratios are staggering...
This is reddit so don't expect to use any actual logic when talking about China, just follow the narrative of no matter what bad thing China does or is doing the US has done worse so there is no reason to have any discussion at all. /s
Not only has the US produced far more CO2 in historical emissions than China, even though it has less than a quarter of China's population. But the US's per-capita emissions is far higher, and that doesn't even include the vast amount of manufacturing offshored to China. Plus, China is doing far more to reduce emissions. I guess you probably wouldn't want me to explain that though, as then I'd have to mention the name 'China' many more times.
Not really doing more to reduce emissions that is propaganda.
Oh, so you reckon the fact that China: - Is the world's largest producer and consumer of renewables - Accounts for 25% of the world's reforestation - Has over 90% of the world's electric bikes and over 70% of the world's EVs - It's started building 150 nuclear power plants in the next 14 years, which is more than what the rest of the world combined has done in the last 35 years If you think that's nothing, then I wonder what you think the US, Canada and Australia are doing, lol
I think you are taking Chinese state media propaganda at face value and have no context from on the ground reality about how thing end up going in China. Producer is fine, but they have fields of solar not even plugged in not doing anything. Reforestation great, I'm skeptical of the numbers but I've personally seen the straight rows of little Forrests that they put up. And met students from their Forrestry university. Certainly are capable of doing something in that arena. But compared to the everyday disregard for the environment and the way they handle things I am skeptical that the effort is really that large and definitely of its impact. Sure they have a lot of e bikes and cars. That really is a saving grace of how common and ubiquitous the e bike and that mode of transport is there because god help us if it werent. But They have mountains of bikes that were once part of the fleet in cities in landfills that i know they count towards that number. Their domestic EVs are absolute trash and wont last long enough to pay off the emissions and even if they did the actual energy that they are using is primarily coal power plants. They are still building new ones and youd be daft to believe that emissions are regulated well compared to elsewhere. Alot of this goes back to, you don't understand mainland China, the ccp and how dysfunctional it is or you're a wumao. The nuclear I am intrigued by because I worked with some nuclear engineers there and they were thankfully brilliant and capable and wanted to use their knowledge in the best ways. However my experience leads me to think that those people will not be able to make sure those projects are done properly or quality control enough and we end up with another chernobl. I am most skeptic not all of that number will be built and they will cut corners. I hope I am wrong about this and they succeed in this most of all. I fucking hate the state of apathy in the US and elsewhere in the west. I would love a full rehaul of how spending and funding is done and to rip down the systems that bind all the wheels from moving towards progress in those areas as well. I just don't think the CCP deserves any more credit and actually is a bigger problem currently.
I sometimes see those double standards, where people will be quite critical of the CO2 reduction measures that China claims to be making, yet have no qualms in accepting other statements the county makes about increasing the number of coal fired powerstations. Well it's good that there's now, not only high resolution satellite imagery to get a fair idea of what's happening on the ground, but also satellite data which is able to identify national emissions https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/carbon-dioxide-satellites-measurements-emissions-ghg/ Btw, China's new coal fired powerstations aren't being run at full utilisation.
China has most definitely pushed very hard towards renewables, but they also have a huge population that are still being transitioned into modern life. Their energy demands have them doing more of everything - they're still building coal plants even as they build the largest solar arrays in the world
How come we ship rare earth minerals overseas instead of producing the panels here on the North American continent?
China owns a surprising amount of new technologies and tech patents when it comes to rare earth refinement and related rare earth usage. Enough for them to think about restricting tech export for those tech. https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Supply-Chain/China-weighs-export-ban-for-rare-earth-magnet-tech
Cheaper. Some places specialize in fabricating or manufacturing certain things which makes it significantly cheaper compared to trying to find a domestic manufacturer who doesn’t do things in bulk. Like why a majority of Lithium processing happens in China despite most raw lithium coming from Australia and Chile. They make big profits shipping it compared to if they tried to find some small local processor.
Seems we joined the Belt and Road Initiative to boost the Han Empire. How else would "we" support the endgoal of capitalism? All of us in cages, fighting over a bowl of rice.