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remarkEontoday at 3:38 AM2 repliesview on HN

And this is two dimensional thinking.

PRC has spent the better part of the last two decades gobbling up the supply chains that feed into solar panel manufacturing. Suppose you and I, being experienced technologists and enterprising individuals, decided tomorrow that we were going to start a solar panel manufacturing company. Surely this will be a growing, potentially high margin business because demand will be high if we're electrifying everything because of the aforementioned energy crisis. We are going to run head first into a wall of raw materials supply that is controlled by ... China.

So my point is that if you want to flip the energy generation to "green" and solar on some aggressive timeline, you are going to be dependent on China to do so. There are very obvious geopolitical reasons for why this is a very dumb idea. One of the ways I gauge how serious someone is about moving energy generation in the United States to solar is if they are okay with opening up closed mines so we can produce the rare earths, here, that are needed to manufacture the panels themselves. If they're cool with that, great, let's get stared. If they aren't, then they're not serious and are bandwagoning.


Replies

triceratopstoday at 3:43 AM

And I'm saying the US doesn't need to bother with rare earth mining as long as China is happy to export their panels. Buy as many as they sell. Build up a strategic panel reserve.

If they ever stop, use the reserve and gas plants to backstop. Spend the next 20 years developing domestic PV manufacturing capability, safe in the knowledge that your current panels are good for at least that long.

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jhanschootoday at 4:55 AM

Today's mainstream solar panels use abundant, widely available materials.

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