The good thing, we were told, about decarbonization was all the new jobs it was going to create. Not only that, net zero was going to lessen the West’s dependency on unreliable authoritarian states.
I wonder how things are going with the EU’s solar sector.
Europe’s solar power industry has warned that a glut of cheap Chinese imports has pushed some manufacturers to the brink of bankruptcy, hampering the EU’s efforts to boost local production of green technologies.
SolarPower Europe, a trade group for the industry, wrote to the European Commission on Monday that soaring stockpiles and “fierce competition” among Chinese manufacturers to gain market share in Europe had pushed down the prices of solar modules by more than a quarter on average since the beginning of the year..
The EU is hoping that solar power will become the biggest generator of energy within the bloc as it tries to reach a target of having 45 per cent of energy generated by renewables by 2030 — a goal set to be voted on by the European parliament this week.
But China’s dominance of the solar supply chain means that its products account for around three-quarters of the bloc’s solar power imports, prompting fears that the EU is developing a reliance on China akin to its dependence on Russian gas until Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The cost of manufacturing a solar module in Europe is more than double the current spot price..
The dramatic drop in prices meant the EU’s goal to manufacture 30GW of the solar power supply chain in Europe by 2030 was now “at serious risk”, the letter [from SolarPower said.
Maybe things are better for Europe’s wind sector.
The FT:
The wind industry has made similar calls to Brussels fearing that turbine manufacturers are also being undercut by Chinese rivals. . . .
Oh.
Well, there are always electric-vehicle batteries.
The FT:
Western executives have also warned that China is massively subsidising and building battery plants for electric cars, far beyond levels needed to meet domestic demand — a trend that could also scupper Europe’s ambition to expand its production of EV batteries.
Oh.