Behind the Rise of U.S. Solar Power, a Mountain of Chinese Coal [View all]

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Even now, I can virtually hear NNadir headed to the keyboard.

Don't worry about me; I've already started the popcorn (literally, not virtually).

Oh, I forgot. Rupert Murdoch owns The Wall Street Journal., so this isn't true.

IIRC, BP had a solar panel factory up in Frederick, Maryland. I guess that's long closed.

Full disclosure: I live in northern Virginia. We get our power from Dominion Energy, which means North Anna. That's nuke. It has been for fifty years.

The U.S. loves solar power, but the panels are made using Chinese coal. Governments and companies are looking for emissions cuts at the source.

Link to tweet

World

Behind the Rise of U.S. Solar Power, a Mountain of Chinese Coal

Reliance on coal-fired electricity to produce solar panels raises concerns in the West

By Matthew Dalton
https://twitter.com/DJMatthewDalton
[e-mail]
July 31, 2021 8:32 am ET

Solar panel installations are surging in the U.S. and Europe as Western countries seek to cut their reliance on fossil fuels.

But the West faces a conundrum as it installs panels on small rooftops and in sprawling desert arrays: Most of them are produced with energy from carbon-dioxide-belching, coal-burning plants in China.

Concerns are mounting in the U.S. and Europe that the solar industry’s reliance on Chinese coal will create a big increase in emissions in the coming years as manufacturers rapidly scale up production of solar panels to meet demand. That would make the solar industry one of the world’s most prolific polluters, analysts say, undermining some of the emissions reductions achieved from widespread adoption.

For years, China’s low-cost, coal-fired electricity has given the country’s solar-panel manufacturers a competitive advantage, allowing them to dominate global markets.

Chinese factories supply more than three-quarters of the world’s polysilicon, an essential component in most solar panels, according to industry analyst Johannes Bernreuter. Polysilicon factories refine silicon metal using a process that consumes large amounts of electricity, making access to cheap power a cost advantage. Chinese authorities have built an array of coal-burning power plants in sparsely populated areas such as Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia to support polysilicon manufacturers and other energy-hungry industries.

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