Europe’s Green Energy Ambitions Clouded by Surplus Chinese Solar Panels
Europe’s efforts to boost green energy with EU-made solar panels are being threatened by a massive surplus from China, causing price drops and risking bankruptcy for European manufacturers. The Telegraph has more.
Millions of solar panels are piling up in warehouses across the Continent because of a manufacturing battle in China, where cut-throat competition has driven the world’s biggest panel-makers to expand production far faster than they can be installed.
The supply glut has caused solar panel prices to halve. This sounds like great news for the EU, which recently pledged to triple its solar power capacity to 672 gigawatts by 2030. That’s roughly equivalent to 200 large nuclear power stations.
In reality, though, it has caused a crisis. Under the EU’s ‘Green Deal Industrial Plan’, 40% of the panels to be spread across European fields and roofs were meant to be made by European manufacturers.
However, the influx of cheap Chinese alternatives means that instead of tooling up, manufacturers are pulling out of the market or becoming insolvent. Last year 97% of the solar panels installed across Europe came from China.
The European Solar Manufacturing Council (ESMC) has warned of a looming “wave of bankruptcies” including Dutch panel producer Exasun and Austrian module manufacturer Energetic.
ESMC secretary general Johan Lindahl has appealed for “urgent” measures to safeguard the sector, calling for the EU to buy up all those unwanted solar panels to keep his members in business. …
Can European manufacturing catch up? “I think that ship has sailed,” says Tom Smout at Aurora Energy Research.
“Up to 2012, there was a healthy looking European solar panel industry but it was actually very reliant on subsidies and preferential treatment.
“But then European governments and other customers started buying from China because their products were so much cheaper. And China still has cheap labour and cheap energy plus a massive domestic market. It’s hard to see Europe recovering from those disadvantages.”
Worth reading in full.
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“Green” jobs, lol.
Yet another concerted attack on European industry. The technology might be pointless but the accompanying industries will suffer terribly and may not recover.
All going to plan then.
Write out a million times: Jobs are a cost.
Then write out a million times: Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production, the interests of ‘accompanying industries’ is to be considered only as much as it serves the interests of consumers.
”The technology might be pointless… “ In which case it is of no service to consumers, is it?
Making solar panels which create no wealth for the economy, just create a cost (jobs), which provide nothing to consumers that they cannot get elsewhere at lower cost – is not making people richer, it is misallocation of resources, capital & labour, which could be better used productively elsewhere to create wealth.
That has a big opportunity cost.
If the Chinese want to do that, let them.
The attack on European industry is the EU, environmentalism and Net Zero.
Excellent comment, thanks JXB.
Just another proof that the push for Net Zero is not about the planet but their profits?
How about investing the money saved by purchasing half price solar panels in recycling facilities, as the panels have a lifespan of 25-30 years and recovering materials (some of them, such as lead, quite toxic) is far from being efficient?
I doubt they’ll last that long
China has been undermining the West in an often inscrutable way. They have benefitted from all the scientific, technical and industrial knowledge that the West created over at least 200 years and good for them. By applying all that hard won knowledge they have leapt to the front in one generation, and good for them. But, instead of China being an addition to the wealthy nations, she has gone about trying to undermine others and the West in particular. For example, the dumping of cheap steal on the World markets has caused steal production to plummet across the developed nations so that China now produces more steal than the rest of the world combined. China is the largest producer of solar panels which gives China the camouflage to hide the fact it’s economy is predominantly driven by coal, oil and gas. If the EU and other countries considers that the correct response to China flooding the market with solar panels is to respond by increasing solar panel production here then China will have managed to get the EU to sabotage itself by focusing on a futile and terminally costly endeavour. Because solar panels are ‘green’ and just like all the… Read more »
Thanks for your efforts.
Is it dumping when the seller has lower labour and energy costs. Sounds to me the west shackled manufacturers through excessive regulation and unaffordable energy costs.
Add in the use of slave labour, for whom I expect dangerous and unhealthy work is reserved, and China was always bound to win.
Yet another victory for the know nothing elite.
I agree regarding all the extra regulation, net-zero, lockdowns and the publicly funded furlough and the the WFH mandates – I recall hearing environmental activists given air time on the BBC at least a year before the lockdowns and they were demanding we all work from home to save the planet. We all know that China isn’t restricted in this way but they have a growing middle class (between 700 and 800 million and growing), which must mean they are growing wealthy from modern industry. I worked at Heathrow for a while and colleague was working on a project to use the demographic data of the passengers to assist the retailers. At that time 30% of profits came from just 2% of the passengers and that was the Chinese. We also know of the terrible work practices which also include the Uighurs being used as slave labourers. Parallel to that is the anti-west propaganda that China is propagating around the world in publications such as China Daily. So this is not a level playing field, or free market global economy.
Why do you want to pay more for things?
It is probably cheaper to raise children in other countries, especially developing. I could ditch my children and spend my money on someone else’s children. It would be much cheaper.
“China has been undermining the West in an often inscrutable way.”
Giving us cheaper products which gives us more to spend on more things which makes us richer. How awful!
More undermining please.
It used to be called ‘dumping’ JXB. A form of economic welfare which destroys manufacturing industry sectors in receipients countries and hinterlands. It may make some products cheaper but those who lose their jobs cannot afford anything and then everyone else starts to suffer as it affects exchange rates. Except the bloated public sector whose salaries are paid from evr increasing taxes on the fewer remaininf productive sectors.
Less undermining – our traitorous government have the tools to mitigate it but won’t as they are taking orders from the globalists
You are correct. This is a deliberate strategy that China uses to drive competition from the market. They undercut other manufacturers until they go out of business. They also control the WTO.
Sort of Off-T and remarkably from Off-G. Kit Knightly on blistering form…
”
“Lockdowns killed people than they saved. Lockdowns doubled global child poverty.
Lockdown doesn’t work, it never worked and it wasn’t supposed to work.
Lockdown was not a policy mistake it was murder.”
https://off-guardian.org/2024/03/23/lockdowns-fourth-birthday/
Apologies for the above scruffy post but the edit function is playing up.
Hux – please see this excellent analysis of the relationship between China and Dr Fauci during the Wuhan Flu outbreak.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb-JExoBhmU&t=295s
Fauci Follows ‘the Science’ | Kate Wand
The bit where a Chinese Professor states that natural immunity won’t work because its unscientific and inhuman is very revealing. See also the change to the definition of immunity made by the CCP sponsored WHO late in 2020.
In addition China only locked down Wuhan and not all of China. In 2020 Our World in Data asked the following question with strong inferences that the individualist west had failed in this endeavour.
Which countries have protected both health and the economy in the pandemic?
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-health-economy
In this article is the graph indicating economic decline in the second quarter of 2020. China is not shown and has to be added manually and is shown below. Our World in Data did not follow up with the third quarter or a year later no doubt because the intent was not to educate but coerce.
Our World in Data is primarily funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and also from the German entrepreneur, businesswoman and philanthropist Susanne Klatten. In addition the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation alone is responsible for over 88 per cent of the total amount donated by philanthropic foundations to the WHO.
Thanks for the link.
The WHO pics are very funny although obviously deeply sinister.
Here’s another funny one. I’m sure you can guess who the third person along is?
😀😀😀👍
The good News about Net Zero keeps coming.
I would never describe Green Energy as an “ambition”. ——It is more of a “conspiracy” to deny affordable energy to the masses for political purposes. If anyone does not know what those politics are by now I feel sorry for them——Here is a little clue —Why do you think “Earth Day” is the same day as Lenin’s birthday? ——-Because Green and communism are indistinguishable. ———-Isn’t it funny how the climate alarmist people always talk about “Big Oil” but never about “Big Wind” or “Big Solar”
The intellectually dense engineers and scientists who see solar and wind as a solution to high energy societies are mentally ill. Millions of low power solar panels will be completely useless after 3 or 4 years and will need replacing with materials that are not available. Whereas, highly energy dense coal, gas a s nuclear power station can oumpsmout megawatts of power with replacement parts relatively easily available and predicable.
Green communists are not bright people. They are hippy minded individuals pretending that we can live in nonsensical ways.
Cancel nuts zero or we will suffer economically and socially
‘“Up to 2012, there was a healthy looking European solar panel industry but it was actually very reliant on subsidies and preferential treatment…”’
Would those subsidies be from the long-abused taxpayers and the ‘preferential’ treatment given, be from the government shysters to their mates in industry, by any chance?
Of course China has cheap labour and cheap energy- they have slave labour and coal fired power stations. UK planning regulations require you to have a renewable source of energy when you build a house, so they force you to support slavery (because you also need battery storage- all those child miners in the Congo) and the burning of fossil fuels – which they tell us is bad and so we need to use solar! The imbecility of the whole circular greenwashing nonsense is hard to accept is actual government policy. They have outsourced their brains as well.
Most of our manufacturing has been outsourced to China, thanks to the Net Zero lunacy and a policy of “expensive energy.”
Did the morons in the EU and UK really not understand that the vast majority of so-called “green jobs” will be created in China?
China will subsidize their solar panel manufacturers. lowering their prices.
This will drive non-Chinese solar panel manufacturers out of business.
China will then control most of the solar panel manufacturing.
Then they will increase prices and we will be under the control of the Chinese government.