@65dBnoise Germany altmaier'd the local PV industry in 2012 to make sure it won't be an alternative to fossil power generation after Fukushima drove Germany to the Nuclear Exit. The secretary of state developing the legislation for that was Katharina Reiche, who is Minister for Commerce and Energy in the current administration.

#climateCrisis] #China #solar #US #Gemany #ClimateCrisis

@65dBnoise

«How did solar power become so cheap? By the 2020s, China was dominating the global solar market. How did they manage that? Solar needs cheap coal because making silicon requires volcano-like heat. In the 2020s, China was building about two new coal plants a week—six times more than the rest of the world combined. Solar needs cheap charcoal. Every year, China was also going to its war-torn and destitute neighbor, Myanmar, and extracting 14,000 football fields’ worth of tropical forest wood to make cheap charcoal to help smelt its silicon.
Solar needs cheap nickel. Indonesia had become the world’s leading producer of nickel, much of it going to China. In Indonesia, by the mid-2020s, 50,000 hectares of tropical forests—home to uncontacted Indigenous people—had been cleared for nickel mining, with reports of constant strife and workers deaths at Chinese-run nickel mines in the country. Nickel needs cheap coal. By the 2020s, Indonesia’s coal industry was booming, partly driven by a surging nickel-smelting industry. Making one ton of Indonesian nickel caused about 45 tons of CO2. [...]»

https://gerrymcgovern.com/solar-is-cheap-for-a-reason/

cc: @gerrymcgovern