this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
60 points (100.0% liked)

World News

32316 readers
1071 users here now

News from around the world!

Rules:

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/18089617

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] memfree@lemmy.ml 26 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Chinese-backed companies have distinct advantages over competitors in the U.S., such as heavily subsidized supply chains for raw polysilicon and unfinished solar modules, as well as low-cost government financing.

U.S.-based Convalt, for example, is struggling to bring online 10 GW of U.S. capacity at a factory it started building in upstate New York in 2022.

"If we are to succeed, we need American manufacturers like Convalt to survive this onslaught of low prices, to build factories with capacities that allow us to compete against the largest global firms, with Chinese beneficial ownership," CEO Hari Achuthan said

This is one of the many reasons it is a bad idea to privatize utilities/infrastructure. That said, U.S. subsidies helped destroy economies across the globe (like Jamaica's dairy farmers via world bank loan rules), so it is basically 'fair play' for China to play a similar game.

[–] gibmiser@lemmy.world 15 points 4 months ago (1 children)

So let's take all those oil and gas subsidies and transfer them to domestic green tech.

[–] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 6 points 4 months ago

We can't do that, it would upset our good friends the Saudis

[–] nekandro@lemmy.ml 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

"Heavily subsidized supply chains"

Let's just call it what it is: economies of scale. China makes up 80% of the polysilicon market. The US? Barely 5%. Scale is the strongest subsidy of them all.

[–] Assian_Candor@hexbear.net 4 points 4 months ago

Yes but it's not like they woke up one day and had all of the market. The state made a conscious effort to invest heavily in building capacity in this sector even if it meant flooding the market. And now they are global leaders with a massive market share.

There's nothing stopping the US from doing the same thing other than liberalism.