China Kicking America’s Ass in Race to Go Solar
August 26, 2009 · Print This Article
Leave it to China to find a way to produce just about anything on the cheap, and do it really quickly. Despite the Obama administration’s dedication to getting America’s clean energy industry off the ground, China is leaving us in the dust and it’s looking unlikely that we’ll get a good chance to catch up.
In fact, the Chinese are preparing to build plants right here in the United States to assemble their products, to get around protectionist legislation.
From The New York Times:
The Obama administration is determined to help the American industry. The energy and Treasury departments announced this month that they would give $2.3 billion in tax credits to clean energy equipment manufacturers. But even in the solar industry, many worry that Western companies may have fragile prospects when competing with Chinese companies that have cheap loans, electricity and labor, paying recent college graduates in engineering $7,000 a year.
“I don’t see Europe or the United States becoming major producers of solar products — they’ll be consumers,” said Thomas M. Zarrella, the chief executive of GT Solar International, a company in Merrimack, N.H., that sells specialized factory equipment to solar panel makers around the world.
China’s commitment to solar energy isn’t likely to make a big dent in the fight against global warming, especially given the country’s own skyrocketing emissions, much of which are caused by the pollution that goes hand-in-hand with running ultra-low-cost factories.
America still has the world’s largest supplier of photovoltaic cells – First Solar in Tempe, Arizona – but China’s Suntech is not far behind. Suntech plans to build a solar panel assembly plant in the United States “to facilitate sales — ‘buy American’ and things like that”, according to the company’s president for global sales and marketing.
Link [The New York Times]
Photo credit: OregonDOT
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Young American engineers, just entering the job markets have astoundingly high personal debt, clearly inferior education, and incredulous sense of entitlement combined with expectations for Corvette cars, McMansion homes, Barbie-Doll surgically altered sex-toy playmates, Bankers hours in offices equipped for Saudi Princes, pay schedules that include profit sharing and wages fit for captains of industry, holidays even retired folks don’t get, and fringe benefits even Ford executives don’t see after life-time service! Does this have anything to do with the move of investment capital to Asian centers? Does cheaper Asian labor come into the picture? Has America priced herself off the market? Is there a reason we will soon be driving GM (China)’s cars, the Cherrie? the new Shanghai Buick? Do any of these notions underly the Hyundai success story in America? Do we have a problem at home? What can we do about it? Can we do it soon enough to save our butts, hole, both cheeks ?
China are moving in the right direction but they are moving ever so slowly. Some of their large scale projects (like the Three Gorges Dam) have been some of the most environmentally damaging projects ever witnessed on the planet.
China has become a big force in this field now.They are actually supplying lot of low cost solar panels to America.