China’s giant solar industry is in turmoil (soft paywall)

Submission statement:

China has been a major leader in manufacturing solar panels, being by far the largest producer of them. While production looks to expand, it is slowing down as there is now an oversupply of panels, leading to negative profit margins on some raw materials.

The cheap cost of existing panels has also lowered their costs so much that manufacturers are only able to extract slim profits on finished products, leading to a squeeze that might force smaller firms to close. This also affects the global industry, as cheap Chinese panels are slowing down domestic expansion of manufacturing in other countries, all while energy demand continues to soar.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/05/16/chinas-solar-dominance-set-to-continue-amid-price-slide/

Meanwhile, fossil fuels, specifically oil, continue to give financial returns at between 4-5x that of solar.

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/11/1217802769/oil-prices-exxon-mobil-green-energy-solar-wind-cop28-climate-talks

This means that, while solar is continuing its expansion, the rate is slowing at a time when it needs to be accelerating, putting targets for renewables out of reach.

Perhaps the main issue is a reliance on markets to be the leaders in the energy shift, as the blog post below theorizes. The solution might be nationalizing both renewable and fossil fuel companies to remove the profit motivation and make the clean energy transition the primary goal.

https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2024/06/23/fixing-the-climate-it-just-aint-profitable/