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submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 26 points 2 years ago

China out here trying to single-handedly save the world from climate change in spite of the West’s best efforts to end all life on earth

[-] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago

that's a pretty accurate summary of the state of things

[-] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Can't wait until reality closes in on libs living in an increasingly fascist West while China moves on into the future. The collective shock must be immense.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago
[-] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago

But at what cost ? ? ?

[-] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago

Another China W

[-] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago

But you see, if the West had bothered funding its own clean energy sector, it might have grown fat and complacent while sheltered from the innovative pressure on the free market; instead of depending on China at every single step of the supply chain, being outclassed by Chinese producers even in their own domestic market, and finding itself firing up its old coal plants again

[-] [email protected] -3 points 2 years ago

Most of this is solar, which China has always been the main producer of.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago

"Always". First proper mass-scale photovoltaic factories were from the 1980s onwards, and both the relative cost and efficiency has been at a stand still ever since the Reagan era up till the 2010s. Saying China has "always" been the main producer is a gross innacuracy and does a lot to overlook the West's unwillingness to take on the same responsibilities. Renewable energy has always been a grift to the West, just look at how the market collapsed after 2008 due to the solar panels becoming "too cheap" and government cronies no longer getting that government subsidy money, and instead of making less profit just decided to close the factories.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

But why acknowledge the success of China when I can just dismiss it out of hand as not a big deal?!!

[-] [email protected] -4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Remind me again, which part of the world are most semiconductor devices made? Certainly, for as long as I've been alive China has been the international manufacturing hub for that stuff.

Your graph is a bit misleading as it does not show quantities, only relative proportions. Solar cells were developed in the US, but China is where they were mass produced.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Remind me again, which part of the world are most semiconductor devices made?

Seeing as your're going by your gut feeling as opposed to doing a quick 1 min google search:

  1. Taiwan
  2. South Korea
  3. Japan/China
  4. USA (Overtaken in 2019/20)

for as long as I’ve been alive China has been the international manufacturing hub for that stuff

The trend is that China will get around 25-30% of the market share in a decade. In that trend, with no changes permitted, China might need a few more decades before they produce more than 50% of the market share, so unless you have yet to be born and you're about to come clean about us inventing time travel in the future; you're mistaken.

Solar cells were developed in the US, but China is where they were mass produced.

You're using to "were", trying to make it sound like these periods overlapped. Americans started producing and selling the first practical solar cells more than half a century (1950s) before China even made a single one (2000s). Heck, and the first patents were half a century before that.


If China was already dominant in the field, then what is the whole commotion about China retaking Taiwan and them ordering chip fabs from the Netherlands? Stop reading headlines.

[-] [email protected] -1 points 2 years ago

I thought Taiwan was a part of China?

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

German solar producers crying endlessly right now.

this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
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