Biden Waives Solar Panel Tariffs, Seeks To Boost Production (apnews.com) 219
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: President Joe Biden ordered emergency measures Monday to boost crucial supplies to U.S. solar manufacturers and declared a two-year tariff exemption on solar panels from Southeast Asia as he attempted to jumpstart progress toward his climate change-fighting goals. His invoking of the Defense Production Act and other executive actions comes amid complaints by industry groups that the solar sector is being slowed by supply chain problems due to a Commerce Department inquiry into possible trade violations involving Chinese products. The Commerce Department announced in March that it was scrutinizing imports of solar panels from Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia, concerned that products from those countries are skirting U.S. anti-dumping rules that limit imports from China.
White House officials said Biden's actions aim to increase domestic production of solar panel parts, building installation materials, high-efficiency heat pumps and other components including cells used for clean-energy generated fuels. They called the tariff suspension affecting imports from Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia a bridge measure while other efforts increase domestic solar power production -- even as the administration remains supportive of U.S. trade laws and the Commerce Department investigation. [...]
The use of executive action comes as the Biden administration's clean energy tax cuts, and other major proposals meant to encourage domestic green energy production, have stalled in Congress. The Defense Production Act lets the federal government direct manufacturing production for national defense and has become a tool used more commonly by presidents in recent years. The Trump administration used it to produce medical equipment and supplies during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic. Biden invoked its authority in April to boost production of lithium and other minerals used to power electric vehicles.
White House officials said Biden's actions aim to increase domestic production of solar panel parts, building installation materials, high-efficiency heat pumps and other components including cells used for clean-energy generated fuels. They called the tariff suspension affecting imports from Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia a bridge measure while other efforts increase domestic solar power production -- even as the administration remains supportive of U.S. trade laws and the Commerce Department investigation. [...]
The use of executive action comes as the Biden administration's clean energy tax cuts, and other major proposals meant to encourage domestic green energy production, have stalled in Congress. The Defense Production Act lets the federal government direct manufacturing production for national defense and has become a tool used more commonly by presidents in recent years. The Trump administration used it to produce medical equipment and supplies during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic. Biden invoked its authority in April to boost production of lithium and other minerals used to power electric vehicles.
In the case of solar, dumping is good (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheaper energy is like glucose+adrenaline for the economy. Energy is what runs the economy. The cheaper energy is, the most stuff can be manufactured .. the farther you can travel literally and figuratively. The world must do whatever it takes to reduce the price of energy, within the bounds of not destroying the planet obviously (at least not until we become space-faring).
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There is a simple adage: Energy is wealth.
The cheaper energy is, the more we can do expensive chemical processes. Take CO2 out of the air, convert it into a synthetic diesel, propane, or ethyl alcohol. Slurp up the plastics in the ocean, use thermal depolymerization to turn the useless stuff into monomers that can be reused. Create desalination plants so that a draught doesn't cause famines. Build public works projects like high speed rail to get cars and long-haul semis off the road.
Energy affects eve
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Cheaper is good but you are ill-advised to sign a contract just because the promised cost is cheap upfront. There is almost certainly a gotcha in the fine print to make sure that you get soaked for far more later on.
In this case costs include
(a) funding an actively genocidal regime
(b) giving that regime control and influence over your economy (those dollars we send over for solar panels get re-invested to, e.g., buy up newspapers and stakes in social media companies to make sure they promote the right pro
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If you think (a) through (e) is bad, try fighting that without energy or a functioning economy!
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I'll spoil the ending if you all don't want to read the links, it's (in no specific order) onshore wind, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear fission.
What I like about wind is the sheer volume of complimentary avenues for innovation.
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When it comes to costs we find solar PV to be often far more expensive than other options. Utility scale solar PV might be cheap but rooftop solar PV costs more than nuclear fission.
You're comparing utility-scale nuclear with consumer-level installations of solar? What an odd choice; no wonder your personal rankings are so skewed. How much would a home fission reactor cost me, compared to a typical rooftop PV installation?
In the real world, where utility-scale generation is the norm, your own links disagree with your rankings:
in terms of the LCOE of the median plant, onshore wind and utility scale solar PV are, assuming emission costs of USD 30/tCO2, the least cost options. Natural gas CCGTs are followed by offshore wind, nuclear new build and, finally, coal.
So even when including an emissions cost, where nuclear currently enjoys a small advantage, wind and solar are still easily the best options, while it's nuclear t
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Obviously fossil fuels are a dead end. They contribute to global warming which destroys the world and acquiring them from hostile countries causes all number of political problems.
Nuclear is a valid option, but has the big problem that capital costs are enormous and various accidents over the decades makes them unpopular among the public so building new ones is very difficult.
There's the "MacMann" solution which is "energy poverty", but that's a no-go since we need energy.
The real only solution is to look
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Nice comment, though you buried what should be the headline.
You also skipped a point that you would think would be on everyone's minds: Just like Germany is having trouble with it's Russian natural gas dependency, you might worry what could happen if the United States develops an eastern asian dependency on energy.
As much as I intensely (Score:5, Insightful)
Call China out on their human rights record. Chew them a new one diplomatically. Humiliate them at the UN. I’m good with all that. Sponsor a home-grown polysilicon plant. This is all good. But, in meantime, don’t embargo their solar products.
At this point, I’m fine with putting all the climate deniers in a blender and pushing the “frappe” button. We dont let toddlers play in traffic. We dont let murderers become medical doctors. It’s time to acknowledge that science-deniers shouldnt be in charge of technological policy. Or we’re gonna pay a HEAVY price for sitting back and passively letting them dictate this one.
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Indeed. Decades of inactivity and making things worse have removed all room for maneuvering here. It is literally 5 minutes past 12. Things will get very bad as it is. All we can still do is prevent them from getting even worse and that needs action _now_.
There is also the little fact that the more international trade China has, the more they have to acknowledge international pressure. Buying from them is good.
Re:As much as I intensely (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that you can civilize the barbarians through trade has been shown to be fairly limited. I’m very much in favor of disengaging economically from China, EXCEPT for key areas like decarbonization. Let’s keep our immigration policy fairly open, so like-minded Russians and Chinese can join our civilization. The rest can reap the rewards of their 16th-century-style way of life.
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The rest can reap the rewards of their 16th-century-style way of life.
This is why you are failing to influence China. The average Chinese person's life has improved immensely over the last couple of decades. Many of them went from farming, often subsidence farming, to having a relatively modern Western lifestyle. Mobile phones, houses, cars, supermarkets, holidays. For them it's been an economic miracle.
They mostly don't know about all the bad stuff their government does, but even if they did the majority would probably just accept it as the cost of progress. I asked one of m
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China has pulled a billion people put of poverty, faster than any country i
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That's clearly untrue. China has adopted a lot of Western culture. Western movies are shown there regularly, it's become a major market for Hollywood.
It's just that they don't want to adopt our culture wholesale. That doesn't mean we can't try - for example, Game of Thrones was very popular in China, and massively pirated because people were dissatisfied with the censored version that was available officially.
Another example would be RoHS. RoHS has been adopted by a lot of Chinese manufacturers, so they can
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I might argue that corporate capture of the major parties and regulatory agencies in our so-called democracies means we shouldn't be crowing about how fair and free our own societies are.
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So, let me amend my earlier statement a bit. I'm fine to continue trading with China, up to a point, when it suits and benefits us, and we should be aware of the severe limits of influence-through-trade. Does their population recognize Iron Man? Yes. Does that mean that they're going to improve their rule of law or alter their thinking about human rights? Not in the slightest.
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China doesnt respond to trade pressure nearly as much as we had hoped.
So? They _do_ respons and unless you want to do a war, that is what is going to be used. Also your hopes may have been unrealistic from the start. (Using "we" is just a transparend and dishonest manipulation attempt.)
Look at US Dept of Energy studies, and UK studies (Score:5, Informative)
The US Department of Energy did studies on the material needs for various low CO2 energy sources. I found a chart of this data as Figure 2 on this website: https://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/... [blogspot.com]
Here comes the replies that "just some blog" is not a valid citation. I'm asking people to look at the chart from the United States Department of Energy, the "just some blog" happens to be a nice explanation of the issue as well as a memorable place to find that chart.
The US Department of Energy tells us that solar PV is a very resource intensive energy source, far more resource intensive than nuclear fission, and not great compared to hydro, wind, and geothermal. If anything thinks this study is bullshit then provide another source for the rest of the class to see. Claiming the data is incorrect is just FUD, showing the data is incorrect is an actual argument on which we can base energy policy.
Related to the material cost issue is energy return on energy invested, or EROEI. It takes energy to mine this material and turn it into something that produces useful energy. We can calculate this return and use that for making good energy policy. Here's a web page that put a number of these studies together in a nice chart, look for Table 2: https://world-nuclear.org/info... [world-nuclear.org]
Here comes the replies on how the website is biased. Don't take the word of a nuclear power advocacy website that nuclear fission has such a high EROEI, take the word of the sources they cite. If you don't like the sources then provide other sources for the rest of the class to see.
It should not be a surprise given the material needs for solar PV that the EROEI is so low. We find hydro, onshore wind, and nuclear fission all scoring highly on EROEI.
The source I gave above on material costs has some data on CO2 emissions and deaths caused by each energy source. We have more recent sources on both metrics.
https://www.ans.org/news/artic... [ans.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] (You may have to scroll down a bit for the 2020 numbers to show.)
The Biden administration is not taking this energy shortage problem seriously. The Biden administration is not even listening to its own Department of Energy. Lifting tariffs on solar PV imports isn't going to help much in addressing the energy shortage problem in the USA. While I'll have people claim that building nuclear power plants would take too long to resolve the energy shortage there is the matter that energy prices today are based in a large part on expected energy supplies in the future. Starting construction on new nuclear power plants shows we can expect relief when they are complete, and if we don't start now then we will certainly face an energy shortage in 5, 10, or 20 years as existing nuclear power plants close due to their age and there's no new nuclear power plant under construction to replace that lost capacity.
I recall a debate with a cow-orker about drilling for oil in the USA where I advocated for drilling for more oil and he claimed that by the time any of those wells would produce oil, about 5 years later, we'd likely have resolved the shortage. Well, 5 years later oil prices hit a new high. If everyone thought drilling for oil was pointless because we would not get anything out for 5 years then we'd be in a constant panic for oil. Plan ahead and we won't have a panic.
We can do more that one thing at a time. We can waive tariffs on solar PV imports while we drill for more oil, start construction on new nuclear power plants, and so many other things we could do
Re:Look at US Dept of Energy studies, and UK studi (Score:4, Informative)
Investors have punished U.S. shale companies that tried to increase their spending on drilling for the last two years – knocking shares of companies that did not cut their budgets and aim for flat oil production.
U.S. shale operators have pulled away from far-flung locales where the break-even cost is higher than in the Permian Basin, the largest U.S. shale play, based in Texas and New Mexico.
The Permian's output peaked in March 2020 at 4.91 million barrels per day; it is forecast to be at 4.89 million bpd in November, or just 0.5% below that peak, according to U.S. Energy Department figures.
The rest of the shale basins in the United States, by contrast, were expected to produce a total of 3.3 million bpd in November, down 27% from a peak 4.5 million bpd reached in February 2020.
. . . Rising shale output, encouraged by OPEC's policy of cutting supply to support prices, helped create a glut during 2014-2016. This glut eventually prompted the creation of OPEC+, which began to restrain output in 2017.
https://www.reuters.com/busine... [reuters.com]
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Your sig that global warming is solved suggests that a huge iceberg of misunderstanding regarding fossil fuel usage underlies your current post.
I believe global warming is solved because we have an "iceberg" of data showing us the solutions. We have the United Kingdom department of energy to thank for this data, and the chief science advisor, Dr. David MacKay, to thank for publishing it so widely.
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
https://www.ted.com/talks/davi... [ted.com]
http://www.withouthotair.com/ [withouthotair.com]
Dr. MacKay says we need carbon capture and nuclear fission or we fail on energy. While the study focuses on the UK we see the data is applicable the world over
Nuke is a non starter (Score:2)
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because nobody trusts American businessmen with it. Do something about that.
So a track record with literally 0 deaths isn't good enough for you? People like you are why people don't believe Global Warming is real. Because knowing that AGW is real and having that impossibly high bar for nuclear at the same time seems completely and totally insane.
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Without massive taxpayer support on a scale that dwarfs support for solar and wind, nuclear just isn't viable. You can't even insure a nuclear plant unless there's an agreement to leave taxpayers on the hook for just about all of the cleanup costs if there's an "oopsie".
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MacMann, if you are going to create new accounts at least don't post the same old long debunked bullshit you were posting on the old one.
Nobody gives a shit about EROEI, except you. You love it because nuclear has the highest EROEI, but conveniently ignore the fact that it's also the most expensive and takes decades to build.
The very fact that you are here every day, shilling for the nuclear industry on every story even tangentially related to energy, is proof that nuclear power has failed. If it was any go
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EDF is currently building new nuclear plants in Europe and China. Their initial estimates were 10 years, then extended to 20 years and the price more than doubled. The British government is consulting on yet another new plant at Sizewell, and EDF is quoting 20 years to build it.
There are no major legal issues at sites like Sizewell. There's already a nuclear plant there, so much of the infrastructure already exists and any environmental or NIMBY issues were solved long ago when the build the existing one.
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Did you take your meds today?
Yes, and I feel much better now.
Chinese subsidies paying for our infrastructure (Score:2)
Buying cheap solar panels from China means we are getting the Chinese to subsidise installation of valuable assets in our country. I don't know if China is still doing this, but Chinese solar panel manufacturing was heavily over-invested for some time, to the extent that there was more capacity than demand. I can't find the reference now, but a Chinese solar company went bust, because there was not enough demand to keep the factory running, no matter how much they reduced the selling price. It had been stan
It's a good idea sort of... (Score:2)
Tariffs are a horrible idea, especially in an inflationary period with full employment. They are a consumption tax that hopes to drive expansion of domestic supply but they rarely work as expected. Case in point - renegotiated NAFTA aka USMCA caused Canada to stop exporting baby f
Conterrproductive (Score:2)
If we were really interested in building US production, allow US solar energy companies to write off appropriate taxes. Also, take tax credits/write-offs from the petroleum companies and give them to the alternative - renewable energy companies to keep the budget balanced.
New motto (Score:2)
"We will sell them the rope we will use to hang them."
China burns coal to make the silicon for solar (Score:2)
China burns the dirtiest lowest grade coal in the world to make the silicon for solar panels. Cheap solar panel dumping does not help the environment, it just moves the source of the pollution. Sadly, China Joe is helping them bypass tariffs. Chinese factories have been setting up in other countries for years.
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> Biden needs to worry about gas prices and inflation.
Okay, Einstein, what's your Grand Solution?
> Climate change is over.
Oh really.
> The democrats spent all of our money already.
Then tax billionaires. Our inequality level is shocking. We need some inequality for motivation, I agree, but the difference doesn't have to be bigly mega-huge to have effect. Past a point there's diminishing motivation returns.
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The democrats spent all of our money already.
Then tax billionaires.
But... they'll pout and stomp their feet really hard.
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I'm good with taxing billionaires. Just sayin'. There are all kinds of negative scenarios. You're right, its best if they share the wealth in the first place.
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Re: Climate change (Score:2)
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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/0... [nytimes.com]
Piketty’s new book, “A Brief History of Equality,” is perhaps his most optimistic work. In it, he chronicles the immense social progress that the U.S. and Europe have achieved over the past few centuries in the form of rising educational attainment, life expectancy and incomes. Of course, those societies still contain huge inequalities of wealth. But in Piketty’s view, this outcome isn’t an inevitability; it’s the product of policy choices
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> it's the product of policy choices that we collectively make
No, the rich buy laws that favor them. Even Republican voters were not for Don's tax-cuts for rich individuals*, only for middle class. GOP did it anyhow because the rich fund their campaigns, NOT because voters wanted it.
* They were okay with corporate tax-rate cuts, because GOP/lobbyists sold them on the idea that US's tax rates on corporations were allegedly not competitive with world rates, making companies leave.
What's in it for the trolls? (Score:2)
If you have to feed a moronic troll, can't you at least change the Subject? With your help, the vacuous Subject spanned about 1/4 of the discussion.
And that looks like a vicious troll. Especially unlikely to be stung by your sarcasm.
Re:Climate change (Score:5, Insightful)
And bear in mind that 40 years ago, nobody had a cable bill, or a cell phone bill, or an Internet bill, or any streaming subscription bills either. And the legal minimum wage, nationwide, in 1982 was equivalent to almost 1.5 times what it is now.
Re: Climate change (Score:2)
And gas was $0.859/gal, houses were 1/4th their current price, cars were a fraction of their current price, and housing was a lot less - your point?
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Kind of hard to do when the ultra-rich have been taking every bit of economic growth for so long that the real wages for 90% of America's people have gone DOWN in the last 40 years. And bear in mind that 40 years ago, nobody had a cable bill, or a cell phone bill, or an Internet bill, or any streaming subscription bills either. And the legal minimum wage, nationwide, in 1982 was equivalent to almost 1.5 times what it is now.
That's because you didn't have cable, cell phone, Internet, or Netflix. And the minimum wage argument is valid only because standard goods basket (which is used to compare buying power of money) is badly designed, as if everyone's biggest aspiration was to hoard the biggest amount of bread (and other simple foodstuffs) they possibly can.
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Riddle me this: if Musk, Gates, Bezos, et al., all went broke tomorrow, how would you benefit? How would any of that wealth find it's way into your pocket?
Your riddle sucks because it's based on a false premise. The riddle is this: Where did they get their money from and how did that affect what you have in your wallet?
My job pays what it pays, whether Musk is rich or Musk is poor.
If the wealth extraction wasn't as bad as it is today your job would pay more in relative worth. But if you are happy that what you get paid is worth less than what people got 40 years ago, well, you just go ahead and be happy that your salary is getting worth less and less as the years pass by.
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Your riddle sucks because it's based on a false premise. The riddle is this: Where did they get their money from and how did that affect what you have in your wallet?
Well, how Gates got his money wound up drastically increasing the value of my skills, and created a whole lot of jobs in my field. It pretty much revitalized the economy in the 80s and 90s. As much as I detest Gates, he did the world a lot more good earning his money than he ever will giving it away.
If the wealth extraction wasn't as bad as it is today your job would pay more in relative worth. But if you are happy that what you get paid is worth less than what people got 40 years ago, well, you just go ahead and be happy that your salary is getting worth less and less as the years pass by.
Assuming what you say is true, your money not going as far as you think it should has little if anything to do with the billionaires. They don't make monetary policy. Not to mention when your currency gets dev
Re:Climate change (Score:5, Insightful)
Your riddle sucks because it's based on a false premise. The riddle is this: Where did they get their money from and how did that affect what you have in your wallet?
Well, how Gates got his money wound up drastically increasing the value of my skills, and created a whole lot of jobs in my field. It pretty much revitalized the economy in the 80s and 90s. As much as I detest Gates, he did the world a lot more good earning his money than he ever will giving it away.
You are making the mistake of comparing the world before Bill Gates with the world after - basically assuming that if Bill Gates hadn't done what he did then things would not have advanced at all.
In fact, before Bill Gates managed to dominate with Microsoft's monopoly, computing was a multi-player varied marked with lots of different companies competing. Exactly the kind of market that drives innovation, new products and varied development. If there had been true competition rather than monopoly, there would likely have been many more, better products doing much more and better quality than there are now. Furthermore, because there would be multiple different vendors doing different things, the extra value provided would translate into more jobs with people ensuring compatibility, standards compliance and integration.
Just think of the damage done to the internet by the years of stagnation of Internet Explorer 5 when no new features could be added to the web for fear of breaking old browsers. That was a direct consequence of Bill Gates and his frankly evil wealth extraction from people who work for the IT industry.
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excellent response.
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You are making the mistake of comparing the world before Bill Gates with the world after - basically assuming that if Bill Gates hadn't done what he did then things would not have advanced at all.
I made no such claim. Whether or not someone else might have done them, I simply stated the fact is that Gates was the one who did them.
In fact, before Bill Gates managed to dominate with Microsoft's monopoly, computing was a multi-player varied marked with lots of different companies competing. Exactly the kind of market that drives innovation, new products and varied development.
A multi-player market of incompatible platforms. Are you claiming there's been no competition and innovation since Windows/x86 became the standard? Standardization drove innovation, largely by driving down costs. It was inevitable the industry was going to standardize on one platform eventually due to network effects. It just happened to have been x86 (that was due to IBM's
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You are making the mistake of comparing the world before Bill Gates with the world after - basically assuming that if Bill Gates hadn't done what he did then things would not have advanced at all.
I made no such claim. Whether or not someone else might have done them, I simply stated the fact is that Gates was the one who did them.
It's implicit in the statement
Which implies that, in the world minus Bill Gates, there would be fewer jobs in your field. In fact the opposite is true. The existence of Bill Gates destroyed jobs and stole value from the entire field of computing in general and microcomputers especially.
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This looks suspiciously like a Marxist argument, that the bourgeois appropriate their wealth from the proletariat. It relies on the idea that wealth is not created, but just redistributed. If one person profits, it must be at the expense of others.
It's not that it's a zero-sum game, it's that the top are capturing the vast majority of our increasing productivity. There are clear data on this.
In practice, most trading relationships, including the labour market, tend to be mutually profitable. I have no idea what the managing director at the firm I work for makes in salary and bonuses. I am pretty sure it has very little effect on my salary. What might have an effect on my salary is me being a bit more ambitious, and offering something more to my employer, for which I would expect to be rewarded. But I am basically rather lazy, and prefer an easy life, so no extra goodies for me.
For 99% of the people, their bargaining power vs employer is extremely limited. Obviously lowing your MD's salary won't increase yours because that's not how it works. I don't know what you do but let's say you come up with a brilliant idea for a product and bring it to production. It's a success! The CEO will get millions of bonus, owners and shareholders will m
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It's not that it's a zero-sum game, it's that the top are capturing the vast majority of our increasing productivity.
I don't know about rich people "capturing the vast majority" of a nation's productivity. There is no doubt that people who devote their lives to making money, and have the necessary talents to further that aim, have much more money than most people who are just doing a job for wages/salary. Whether waelth seekers "deserve" that extra wealth is a matter of moral debate. If you think they don't deserve that reward, then perhaps you think the state should appropriate that indecent surplus, for the good of soci
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Upper management pays employees as little as they can get away with ...
That depends on who they are competing with, in order to attract the kind of employee they want. If you pay peanuts, expect to get monkeys. Of course, nobody is going to pay more than they need to, out of the goodness of their hearts. But if your competitors offer £30k for an engineer, how many engineers will you find who are prepared to work for £20k? And would they be any good? What if you offered £40k? You can take your pick then.
With fairer resource distribution you would've still had a personal computer and a mobile phone today, but with more money to spend on smartphones and other things.
What exactly would be "fairer resource distribution", and
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Riddle me this: if Musk, Gates, Bezos, et al., all went broke tomorrow, how would you benefit? How would any of that wealth find it's way into your pocket?
It's so very different than that. Most of their wealth (don't forget Warren Buffet!) is in stock value. If they all went broke, it would mean the entire financial house of cards fell and we're all in disaster.
Re:Climate change (Score:4, Interesting)
I do worry when someone who has excess is preventing me, my family or friends from getting more.
I don't care if a billionaire flies by personal jet and then by helicopter all the time. However because of his wealth and by extension his influence convinces politicians to not tax him more, which then comes to a point when I have to fix my cars suspension every three months because the Government will not fix the roads due to lack of funds. Does effect me, and being that I am paying a higher percentage of my income to taxes, as well a good part of my income also going to get my car fixed more often then I should, which I could have used that money on something else to help me exceed in life. While someone who has excess just wants more money just because of ones ego of being richer than others.
We don't care if someone has more then us, we just care when that person is forcing us back.
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1. The US government is more than just one person. Having many people allows for multiple problems to be worked on at the same time.
Side Note: Solar Panels installation will help people produce more energy for their homes and cut their need for heating oil, as well make EV Purchases in the future, cutting the demand for Oil and Gasoline. Thus lowering the gas prices. Inflation is not managed by The President or by the Congress, but by the Federal Reserve (Other people who can work on the problem)
2. Clim
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Side Note: Solar Panels installation will help people produce more energy for their homes and cut their need for heating oil,
Just something you need to know about Solar Panels, large amounts of thermal coal are used to make them. The reason is that after you dig the quartz out of the ground, you have to purify it with large amounts of heat that comes from burning coal. The idea that they actually reduce CO2 release is questionable. It is likely that they make more CO2 per watt produced than natural gas alone. And certainly nuclear makes far less CO2 than either. Just though you should know that. Solving global warming isn't
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Same farmers: "Why is the climate going insane and setting new 100 year records every year? Why are we getting one year's worth of rain every two years now? Is something making the climate change? No... it must be the evil liberals."
Re:Didn't do anything real, not addressing fundame (Score:5, Insightful)
you are just driving us further into the embrace of China.
The goal should be to install as many panels as possible to cut consumption of fossil fuels. Where they come from is secondary.
America gets solar panels that will produce power for 30 years. The Chinese get treasury bonds denominated in a rapidly inflating currency. Seems like a good deal for America.
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you are just driving us further into the embrace of China.
The goal should be to install as many panels as possible to cut consumption of fossil fuels. Where they come from is secondary.
Indeed. Things are _urgent_.
Re: Didn't do anything real, not addressing fundam (Score:4, Interesting)
You left out the part where domestic production of solar panels ceases and China controls production.
It all sounds great, until China runs out of Yuegars(sp?)...
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You can do both. Energy is almost always subsidised, so you can subsidise domestic production, perhaps by guaranteeing to buy the panels at a price that makes it viable. Those panels can be used on government buildings, or distributed to people who can't afford them.
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you are just driving us further into the embrace of China.
The goal should be to install as many panels as possible to cut consumption of fossil fuels. Where they come from is secondary.
America gets solar panels that will produce power for 30 years. The Chinese get treasury bonds denominated in a rapidly inflating currency. Seems like a good deal for America.
I agree, not disagreeing with you, but the problem: the cheaper solar panels are, the less incentive for US manufacturers to invest in manufacturing them.
China operates as a gigantic state-owned and run monopoly. We (USA, most of the west) not only don't, but we compete with each other. It's not a fair playing field at all.
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you are just driving us further into the embrace of China.
The goal should be to install as many panels as possible to cut consumption of fossil fuels. Where they come from is secondary.
America gets solar panels that will produce power for 30 years. The Chinese get treasury bonds denominated in a rapidly inflating currency. Seems like a good deal for America.
The Chinese get the factories, technology, know-how, RnD, developed supply chains, experienced personnel. America gets, yes, the panels. Except at some point in the future the Chinks are going to say "okay chums, this deal has served us well, made us into a technological powerhouse and you into a backwater dependent on imports, but now it's time to renegotiate it, what can you do other than printing more dollars?" - and your answer will be...?
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The Chinese get the factories, technology, know-how, RnD, developed supply chains, experienced personnel.
The Chinese already have all of that.
but now it's time to renegotiate it, - and your answer will be...?
We buy panels from Vietnam, which is ramping up production.
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The Chinese get the factories, technology, know-how, RnD, developed supply chains, experienced personnel.
The Chinese already have all of that.
Yes, and you don't, that's the whole point.
but now it's time to renegotiate it, - and your answer will be...?
We buy panels from Vietnam, which is ramping up production.
LOL. You seem to be under the impression that you can live off producing green-printed paper (and nothing else) indefinitely. Here's a hint: you can't. And when the rude awakening occurs it'll be too late to try to reconstruct industry.
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Yes, and you don't, that's the whole point.
Look, if you want to argue that we need to save America's solar industry, you're a decade too late. It is gone. It isn't coming back.
It is idiotic to put tariffs on panels, inhibiting solar installations, in order to "save" what is already dead.
You seem to be under the impression that you can live off producing green-printed paper (and nothing else) indefinitely. Here's a hint: you can't.
Yes we can. The USD is the world's reserve currency and has no challenger. There is bottomless demand for US treasuries.
We got millions of Japanese cars in the 1980s and 1990s and paid for them with T-bills that have been inflated away to a fraction of their form
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You seem to be under the impression that you can live off producing green-printed paper (and nothing else) indefinitely. Here's a hint: you can't.
Yes we can. The USD is the world's reserve currency and has no challenger. There is bottomless demand for US treasuries.
We got millions of Japanese cars in the 1980s and 1990s and paid for them with T-bills that have been inflated away to a fraction of their former value and Japan isn't redeeming them but demanding more.
We can do the same with Chinese solar panels. We get the panels. They get an IOU they will never redeem.
LOL? No challenger? Hello? Euro? Precious metals? Most importantly, yuan? Newsflash: it's not 80s anymore, and this time you're not up against some tiny island country, but against an empire which about contains a fifth of the world's population, and is experiencing unprecedented growth, while you're stagnating (at best). And they got nukes, you can't just invade them like you did with Iraq when they wanted to switch to Euro for oil trading.
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America gets solar panels that will produce power for 30 years. The Chinese get treasury bonds denominated in a rapidly inflating currency. Seems like a good deal for America.
It is a great deal for America and for China. Free and fair trade goes a long way to bring nations together. But it also has to be beneficial for the environment. I'm not thinking of the solar panels themselves, but the manufacturing process itself. The making of solar panels can have a huge impact on the surrounding environment, and China isn't know for its strict environmental regulations.
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Solar panels have a 10-year average lifespan, not 30
Not sure why you'd say that. All 40 of my 12+ year old Chinese (Renesola Virtus II Hybrid) panels are fine, they still retain over 90% of their original efficiency, and they were originally warranted for 25 years... Because they were apparently (judging by the price) subsidised by the Chinese government, they made their cost in just 6 years or so, they are just profit since then.
Solar panel manufacturing is quite "dirty", I'd personally wouldn't push for having them made near my home. It's better to just bu
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Solar panel manufacturing is quite "dirty", I'd personally wouldn't push for having them made near my home. It's better to just buy them cheap, install them and reap the benefits.
What part of that is "better?" The Earth is a closed system. US regulations mean the production process would have to get cleaner to be done here.
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> Solar panels have a 10-year average lifespan, not 30
Most performance warranties are 90% effective at 10 years, 80% effective at 25 (sometimes 30) years. How desperate do you have to be to claim a solar panel's lifespan is over if the efficacy drops below 90%?
Not to be confused with equipment warranty, which is the physical durability of the panel itself. Those are also about 10 years, but saying that's the end of the product lifespan is even dumber - if a new car comes with a 3-year warranty that doesn
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Solar panels have a 10-year average lifespan
haha no. Maybe cheap flexible thin film ones. Not real residential panels, pretty much all of which are warrantied for 20+ years now, and can be expected to last 30-40.
Re:Didn't do anything real, not addressing fundame (Score:5, Informative)
Solar panels have a 10-year average lifespan, not 30
Bullcrap. My panels are seven years old and still produce 95% of the original power. They are warranteed to produce 80% at 25 years.
it's just an external dependency by a foreign power
More bullcrap.
Foreign oil is dependency because when it stops flowing, your car won't go.
Foreign solar panels are NOT a dependency because if the supply is cut off, installed panels don't stop working.
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Hi NicknameUnavailable. We realised you just woke from a 30 year coma so let's catch you up on significant events:
- The world didn't end during the millennium switch.
- Phones no longer have buttons.
- Thin clients are a thing again.
- Everything is in the cloud now.
- Donald Trump was elected president of the United States (no I'm not joking, hilarity ensued)
- Solar panels have gotten far better and currently have 30 year lifespans, and that lifespan is defined at the point where they only produce 70% of the o
Re:Didn't do anything real, not addressing fundame (Score:5, Informative)
Well, except for biomass fuels. Increasing the percentage of corn ethanol in our gasoline from 10% to up to 15% is burning food for fuel
I question this kind of thinking. We make a lot of corn. A LOT of corn. Like in 2011 the ethanol increase was enough corn to feed 570 million people, of which we don't even have that many people in this country currently, much less eleven years ago. The 10% to 15% change (and it's not an everyone has to do it thing), is going to be about an eighth of the amount of increase in 2011. I don't think the change is going to really move the needle all that much considering the absolute fuck ton of corn we grow here. Additionally, the CBO has indicated that there usually isn't a major change in overall price to consumer for the simple fact, we just have so much damn corn. [cbo.gov]
It's also a bunch of bullshit when the USA has plenty of natural gas reserves of its own
Hold on now. The US also has a coal industry that's been pushing to increase exports of LNG to Europe. The effed up situation with natural gas is something that America is making for America. [cnbc.com] And unless the President just nixes completely exports of the product, of which I absolutely bet WV reps will shout "socialism" with a President dictating free market, the LNG situation is not getting fixed.
Maybe when there is a threat of energy shortages, food shortages, and another world war
I mean we are going through a pretty serious correction, but we're also just coming out of a global pandemic. I know everyone like to doom-say, but let's all keep a bit of perspective.
We could look to onshore wind, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear fission
I mean we could. All of them are like ten year projects in the best timeframes, but we could absolutely be looking at those. I like your optimism that we'll have a Government that can think that far enough ahead.
it is utility scale solar PV where it potentially displaces crops, grazing area for livestock, or green spaces for parks and nature preserves
As is literally anything that's going to provide power for utility. I'm not sure what you're trying to get at here. Humans existing has a cost on the environment.
but we can also do more than one thing at a time
No one is saying we aren't. This is just an article about one thing that came out of the White House today. Many things come out of the White House everyday.
While installing PV panels we can get started on hydro
Let Congress know.
onshore windmills
Yeah, we're doing that. [airswift.com]
nuclear fission power
Got programs to keep the ones we have running. [energy.gov] New ones have a few funding options. But yeah, it's not the 1950s. The cash printer isn't exactly going brrrr. [energy.gov]
The US Coast Guard wants a half dozen new icebreakers. How about making them nuclear powered?
Yeah. That's the plan. [breakingdefense.com]
I think you're trying to make problems that aren't there. I get it, it's not good right now. But I mean, it's not 2008 Housing crisis bad.
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I'm sorry once every other word in your reply became, Democrat, I just stopped reading. I mean I get it, you want to be political. I'm just not even remotely interested in having a political discussion. Especially one where it's just "Democrats cause all ills and kill babies for breakfast". It gets old and wins no one to your side.
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Luckily the higher car payments are more than offset [consumerreports.org] by cheaper running costs. BEV maintenance is half the lifetime cost [arstechnica.com] of similar ICE vehicles, even before you factor in cheap or near-free charging.
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Luckily the higher car payments are more than offset [consumerreports.org] by cheaper running costs.
I've actually had this conversation with my partner, because he'd mentioned to me that he'd love to have an EV. I asked him to look up what he spent on gas the previous month, and add that on top of the car payment. Even compared against a used Chevy Bolt EV and not factoring in the cost of electricity, the dino burner comes out on top.
A few reasons for this are: He has an extremely economical car. It gets well over 34MPG combined, in real world use. It's also an inexpensive car, the monthly payments a
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You should take a look at the articles I linked. It's not just the price of gas, maintenance is half the cost too, because the power train is so much simpler. Even consumables like brake pads last nearly forever on an EV due to regenerative braking. Depreciation is a genuine factor as well - current BEVs are holding their value far better than most ICE cars, so unless you plan to run it into the ground, you may want to include the likely difference in resale price as well.
But this of course compares BEVs wi
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And YMMV, naturally - if you've got an inexpensive car that works for you, I'm not suggesting you double your car payments just to get off the fossil train.
And that's an important distinction to make. There's a big difference between saying "If you're already in the market for a vehicle, consider a BEV to avoid high fuel costs." versus "If you hate paying so much for gas, get an EV." The latter completely disregards the fact that someone may not have the financial means to purchase a vehicle, especially if they're already struggling to afford fuel.
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You are comparing the cost of a new BEV to keeping an old ICE beater on the road.
Of course it is cheaper to keep an old car limping along.
But when you ready for a new car, the BEV is likely to be more affordable than a comparable new ICE when you look at TCO.
And the money you pay to power a BEV doesn't go to autocratic dictators.
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But when you ready for a new car, the BEV is likely to be more affordable than a comparable new ICE when you look at TCO.
I have one on order, and for our usage pattern compared to an '07 ICE, what we pay to charge compared to what we pay for petrol should be within £100/m of what we pay for the new car - it's virtually a 'free' car. If we had PV on the roof and a battery, it certainly would have been - what we would have saved by buying the car would have paid for the car.
Different usage patterns and economy of old cars change the numbers of course.
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I still don't understand why people borrow money to buy cars.
Thing is, for every for every $3k used car that turns out to actually be pretty reliable, there's ten more that are beat to shit and ready to leave you stranded on your way to work.
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When you could finance a new vehicle for less than 1% interest it kind of made sense to finance the car. I haven't looked recently so I don't know if the car companies are still offering these low rates though.
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0 for 60, my last car
dang that was almost 10 years ago
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I'm most definitely not disagreeing with you, but hear me out. Economic theory (garbage as it is) says that even if some people can't afford EVs (me), the more EVs on the road, the less gasoline is in demand, and the price should drop.
Obviously so far that hasn't happened, and the rate gasoline price is rising is unprecedented. Cynical me is sure that prices are being fixed, like in most sectors of the economy, and more than ever. Of course we (USA) can't force OPEC to play fair and compete more fairly.
I
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the less gasoline is in demand, and the price should drop.
There also isn't even close to enough Li on Earth to make enough EVs for that to happen.
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It's not an unfair position that Doomberg indicates. However, there's already been a panel within the Executive office that's dealing with that on a different line. It's a carry over from the Trump policy, but it's a usage of human rights violation [washingtontimes.com] as opposed to DPA.
So yeah, polysilicon industry is omitted, but it's hardly forgotten. If anything it's likely got it's own group going down that rabbit hole. But Doomberg's point stands. Making Chinese polysilicon cost 70% more than median domestic is one t
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by necessity in short order you'll be buying from China at any price, even if you can find a few other small sources it will not be enough to actually increase production they way they want
That's not untrue, but I'm pretty sure that European poly is going to be a consideration first off. We've got plenty of that here too. The Chinese poly is what could be brought in before Trump's order went into effect. They shipped a ton of it in, so there's still quite a bit of it here, but once the already here stuff is gone, I'm pretty sure that there isn't going to be propensity to get more of it at the markup being asked when there's several vendors around, including US.
US producers could ramp up, b
Re: Same difference (Score:2)
Wait, when did we stop investing in 'green' energy? We've had countless billions poured into 'green' initiatives in the last several trillion dollar spending bills...
Re: Didn't do anything real, not addressing fundam (Score:2)
Why did Biden admin make imported solar panels cheaper, and how does that somehow spur on domestic production?
Tariffs exist to protect domestic producers, eliminating them encourage imported products.
Cheaper solar panels from China (no tariff) do not inspire domestic producers to increase production.
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> Cheaper solar panels from China (no tariff) do not inspire domestic producers to increase production
The tariff exemption only applies to Southeast Asia - which does not include China. Chinese solar panels still have the tariff in place. Complaining about solar panels from China makes you look like an idiot.
That said, there's two things at play here;
One, we need more solar power and we need it quickly. We don't have time to wait for domestic production to ramp up. This means the necessary evil of import
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The question is whether the Southeast Asian countries are using a lot of Chinese components. https://www.reuters.com/world/... [reuters.com]
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Yup. And lifting the tariffs is specifically to allay concerns about the effects of that investigation. The silicon needs to flow, but it's hard for importers if they have to worry about paying tariffs on goods they've been selling during the months-long investigation if they determine there's a problem.
The suspension of the tariffs means these importers don't have to worry about what the investigation finds for at least two years. It also helps the investigators do their job in peace.
=Smidge=
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one thing not on the list of increased domestic production is polysilicon
That's because making polysilicon requires burning large amounts of thermal coal. We prefer to offshore that nasty CO2 release so we can pretend it doesn't exist.
Re: Didn't do anything real, not addressing fundam (Score:2)
If you want to increase domestic production, why lower tariffs?