The World's Transition to Renewable Energies

[Leonardo17]

Solar energy production in Europe is going to reach the equivalent of 200 large Nuclear power plants in 2030. While some countries like Germany are stepping out of nuclear power, the overall tendency in the world is also to increase nuclear energy.
 
   On the other hand, European solar panel manufacturers are unable to sell their solar panels because of cheaper Chinese solar panels on the market. Yet, China is also overproducing solar panels and is unable to sell all of its solar panels.
 
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/china...00128.html
 
This does not make any sense since the number of Coal Plants in China is about 3000. India has 300, The US has about 200.
 
https://www.statista.com/statistics/8592...y-country/
 
Let’s forget about the environment. If the market is creating this surplus solar panels on its own, than what if we supported these industries by subsidizing them an encouraging the consumption of these solar panels all over the world (mostly in India and China).
 
The COP Climate summits are actually falling behind our current technological possibilities.

[The Grand Nudger]

The COP Climate summits are actually falling behind our current technological possibilities.

LOL, working as intended.  COP got captured by the fossil fuel industry, and they intend to have the next one in azerbaijan.

Long long ago, chinese companies captured the industry watchdog that compared panels and then kept lowering standards and fudging numbers to make their panels green, or as-green-as their competitors better made and pricier panels - thus beginning the chinese stranglehold on the solar market - a market fueled by human rights abuse and ecological devastation.  Now, today, they make some of the best panels in the world without question, and they'll do anything in their power to hold onto the dominant position they've built for themselves.

I'm not sure what doesn't make sense.  I assume you wonder why they can't offload all the panels when they have so much ff based electricity.  They use that cheap electricity from all of those coal plants to make a bunch of solar, that's one piece of why it's hard to compete.

[Leonardo17]

   There I times when I wonder why I am still separating my plastic waste while most people are still acting like it’s still the damn 90’s. But this stuff is pretty serious. There is already a heatwave in India and its’ 45 / 113 Degrees there. They have 52 /125,5 degrees in India (while Hurricanes seem to be getting stronger every year in the American Midwest).
 

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   This is like the guy who still likes his old habits and has recently heard from the doctor that he has to give up his old habits if he wants to keep living a healthy life. I sort of have been there in my life. I cannot say it’s easy or even simple. It’s simply a step that needs to be taken one way or another.

   My city (Ankara) used to be rather cool in the summer and very cold in the winter (because of the altitude). When I was a kid we used to say that “half of the month of August is actually winter”. Today we have about 35 / 95 degrees or more in early September. I know how difficult it is for the body. Personally, I am mostly staying indoors during heatwaves. In the 90’s, there was no such thing in this city. I don’t remember the weather being “that hot” or it didn’t really matter to me.

   That’s why I am so shocked when I hear these reports. These are countries with a huge amount of humidity + they are poor, they don’t have AC, cold water is also an issue: If at least you have water this can give you a relief from time to time. Otherwise, most people simply cannot stand this kind of temperature. The health system will usually record it as “hearth failure”. But I know that in smaller communities, older people are already dying because of such issues while locals are saying that it’s the heat.

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    So if China is overproducing solar panels, there should be models on a global level on where to deploy them first instead of using them as fences and/or having these be the cause of the closure of solar panel companies in the West (who simply cannot compete with the low-cost Chinese panels that are currently flooding the market).

   Also: I saw it on TV: In Germany they now have high-tech facilities in which they are able to recycle almost 100% of older obsolete solar panels (the glass, the silver, other minerals and even silicon components inside those solar panels)

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm not aware of other countries plans to address this - though I'm certain they exist...but the us plan (at present) is to use section 301 of the Trade Act to increase tariffs on chinese solar (and evs..etc) from 25% to 50%. Which might be good for the us solar industry - but probably isn't great for solar as a goal..at least in the short term.

[Leonardo17]

I'm not aware of other countries plans to address this - though I'm certain they exist...but the us plan (at present) is to use section 301 of the Trade Act to increase tariffs on chinese solar (and evs..etc) from 25% to 50%.  Which might be good for the us solar industry - but probably isn't great for solar as a goal..at least in the short term.

I know about Mr. Biden’s New Green Deal. He sort of continued some of the protectionist policies of the Trump era and is now promoting US Green industries, especially the automobile industries from Chinese rivalry while striking some new agreements with the Europeans in order to not exclude them totally from the US market.
 

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Europe is also taking steps to protect its Green Industries from disloyal competition from China. The problem with China is that they are using Leninist economic models to boost their industries (like electric car industries) that are currently a little more advanced than Western electric car industries. Since the US is now protecting itself by imposing new tariffs on Chinese cars, the Chinese want to flood the European market with these cars. But Europe is also taking measures on them in order to protect its green industries (which include Solar panels, wind turbines and other such products).
 
So I don’t know about electric cars, but I think the UN or other organizations could use this overproduction of Green technology components by China. Could we like create a fund of some sort (in one of these COP summits), buy these solar panels and wind turbine from China and start deploying them in India, Africa, South-America etc, thus protecting Western solar panel producers from extremely cheap Chinese competition and attempting to protect our climate by doing so?
 
I don’t know if ordinary people can really survive at temperatures like 50 / 120 degrees. Indian authorities are reporting 16,000 cases of heat strokes and only 60 deaths since the beginning of March. I know that in smaller communities here people are talking of several deaths in the form of heart-attack among the elderly. They just go to bed at night and do not wake up in the morning.

Report on the Situation in North-Western India
 

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As I said, I am young, but any figure above 30 / 86 degrees is tiring for this 42 year old body. At 35 / 95 degree I will usually need to be in cooled places and / or take frequent showers or stuff like that. 110 – 120 is simply too much for the human body. That’s all I am saying

[The Grand Nudger]

Biden does not now and has never supported the green new deal. He has, additionally, elected to continue some trump trade tariffs, yes.

I suppose we could buy chinese solar and deploy it - but that would be rewarding the unfair trade practices and human rights abuse that the us and europe allege has caused this issue in the first place. Section 307 of the same trade act used to structure the tariffs makes importing the products of forced labor a tough sell. There used to be an exception for such products, if we could find no domestic suppliers or the domestic supply was insufficient to meet demand.... but that was removed in 2015.

104-122f is the limit - and we start getting sick and dying well before that. It's going to get hotter before it gets cooler even if we stopped all fossil fuel use this very minute. We don't just need a green new deal, we need a disaster plan to keep us afloat while we do any green new deal. In the us, we're removing heat protections for labor, and we didn't have much of that to start with.

[MR. Macabre 666]

Biden does not now and has never supported the green new deal.  He has, additionally, elected to continue some trump trade tariffs, yes.

I suppose we could buy chinese solar and deploy it - but that would be rewarding the unfair trade practices and human rights abuse that the us and europe allege has caused this issue in the first place.  Section 307 of the same trade act used to structure the tariffs makes importing the products of forced labor a tough sell.  There used to be an exception for such products, if we could find no domestic suppliers or the domestic supply was insufficient to meet demand.... but that was removed in 2015.  

104-122f is the limit - and we start getting sick and dying well before that.  It's going to get hotter before it gets cooler even if we stopped all fossil fuel use this very minute.  We don't just need a green new deal, we need a disaster plan to keep us afloat while we do any green new deal.  In the us, we're removing heat protections for labor, and we didn't have much of that to start with.

The so called "climate emergency" is a fucking lie. The earth's climate has always changed, and always will, regardless of what we do. As long as China and India continue doing what they've doing to pollute their own air, nothing will improve, even if we did find some magical way to produce energy without polluting the air. Say, something like nuclear energy?

[The Grand Nudger]

If the so called climate emergency was a fucking lie it wouldn't matter whether or not china or india (or anyone else) kept dumping carbon. A person can believe it's not real, or they can believe it is real and other actors will not stop. Believing both is kind of odd.

You make a solid point we'll have to grapple with, though. Half the world reached peak ff use years ago, but the other half is either still increasing or yet to develop...and we can assume that they will dump some amount of carbon if/when they do. Net zero emissions is a great goal for a country like the us, aside from hinky accounting schemes, ofc. Without some plan to change the face of future development on a global scale it won't have the effect we hope, though, and will look more than a little bit like a naked attempt to slam the development door shut behind us. Yet another reason we need some sort of plan in addition to a green new deal in order to handle those predictable outcomes, circumstances, and relationships that could or might make the whole enterprise moot.

Nuclear was a missed opportunity...I think... with a very interesting relationship to the environmental movement in the us, particularly in the current moment. Largely as a consequence of the us environmental movement growing out of socialist environmentalism, cemented by the chernobyl disaster and subsequent soviet disinfo ops. If we're leaving ff for concern of the harm to human life...nuclear waste, and what will inevitably be described as nuclear proliferation in the third world, are a pretty straight-line focus from there. I don't mean this as an endorsement. IMO, nuclear is an improvement over ff. The us could do both. Other nations might be better served by one or the other depending on their circumstances, willingness, and ability. Then again, as above, other nations may have a vested interest in dumping even more carbon because they are a petrostate, expect beneficial outcomes from climate change, or both (hello russia, again!).

I think that, in the end, for the us transition to have the effect that environmentalists hope for it has to be so compelling that other nations follow out of base self interest. I think that can be said of individuals, too. Seeing as how plenty of americans are themselves skeptical, we aren't there yet.

[Leonardo17]

Biden does not now and has never supported the green new deal.  He has, additionally, elected to continue some trump trade tariffs, yes.

I suppose we could buy chinese solar and deploy it - but that would be rewarding the unfair trade practices and human rights abuse that the us and europe allege has caused this issue in the first place.  Section 307 of the same trade act used to structure the tariffs makes importing the products of forced labor a tough sell.  There used to be an exception for such products, if we could find no domestic suppliers or the domestic supply was insufficient to meet demand.... but that was removed in 2015.  

104-122f is the limit - and we start getting sick and dying well before that.  It's going to get hotter before it gets cooler even if we stopped all fossil fuel use this very minute.  We don't just need a green new deal, we need a disaster plan to keep us afloat while we do any green new deal.  In the us, we're removing heat protections for labor, and we didn't have much of that to start with.

I was arguing that we could protect all local green energy device producers by creating some sort of international fund to simply buy all these solar cells and place them in countries who cannot afford a green energy transition. Countries like South Africa, Pakistan, India are relying mainly on Coal and Hydro-electrical Power. India is promising net-zero by 2075. Mainly they are saying that they don’t have the means to do it sooner. So they could pay like 50%, the rest belonging to some international fund, and in a decade or so, the third greatest polluter of the world is rectified to a better track
 
And I am saying this because without the Himalayan Glaciers, India might become one of the Worlds less populated regions by the end of this century
 

“The so called "climate emergency" is a fucking lie. The earth's climate has always changed, and always will, regardless of what we do. As long as China and India continue doing what they've doing to pollute their own air, nothing will improve, even if we did find some magical way to produce energy without polluting the air. Say, something like nuclear energy?”

 
You can tell that to people who do not have a home:
 
https://www.yahoo.com/news/dangerous-hea...04480.html
 
I am hearing that water is being given to these people in places like Phoenix or Los-Angeles. What I am observing in my own city is that in the city center (I live a little outside from the City center), but in places with a lot of concrete and few green areas the asphalt is holding the heat it accumulated in daytime. So even at 2/3 o’clock in the morning you have this uncomfortable heat that is still present as if it was still daytime.
 
So we need to have places to put these people during extreme heatwaves.
 
- That’s until our crops and flocks start dying because of extreme heat and our rivers turn into seasonal water streams because we are unable to AC them of course.
 
/ I’ve never been categorically opposed to nuclear energy. But (like with these Chinese panels) Green energy is cheaper, easier to deploy and a more realistic answer in a state of climate emergency. Nuclear energy is a more long-term type of energy. A nuclear Plant is constructed within 15 years or so and it requires a lot of planning in the long term.
 
Solar panels are so cheap that the brits are using them as fences. So if we were to plan things more carefully, we could still avoid the greater part of the disaster (and you could still say it was a lie to begin with)

[Thumpalumpacus]

2LOT means that no matter what we look to for sources of energy, there will be waste left behind which we must deal with. And the waste will be more than the energy, in the long run.