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Comment by deugtniet | Hacker News Reader

The progress we're seeing in solar has made me the most optimistic about a de-carbonized future in years. I have no doubt that the decision the Chinese government made to heavily subsidize solar manufacturing will make this world a better place.

Already we're seeing that solar energy is more cost effective than all other forms of energy production [1], that the growth of solar has been consistently underestimated by very large players [2], and that solar democratizes energy production more than any other form of energy.

Distibution needs to be improved, but this issue also holds for other non-fossil energy sources. I predict a lot of these problems will be solved through hydrogen generation and storage [3].

[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-is-now-cheapest-electricit... [2] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-does-almost-everyone-unde... [3] https://www.iea.org/energy-system/low-emission-fuels/hydroge...

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> solar energy is more cost effective than all other forms of energy production

Your source doesn’t include wind, which is as cheap (onshore) as (utility-scale) solar [1].

[1] https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april... slide 2

Their project life for solar and wind both seem to be 20 years to calculate LCOE.

That seems to be correct for wind that needs major refitting, but solar seems to be more durable.

Google suggests 10% loss after 20 years for solar.

Therefore, i have doubts that presented numbers are accurate. Solar will simply churn along for far longer, while wind will have to becreplaced.

> project life for solar and wind both seem to be 20 years to calculate LCOE

Not disputing, but where do you see this?

> Solar will simply churn along for far longer, while wind will have to becreplaced

We don’t have good numbers for the longevity of wind turbines either, though it’s probably under 25 years [1].

> doubts that presented numbers are accurate

Unlikely. The terminal value of that residual at any reasonable cost of capital is, while non-negligible, not going to be significant. (See Slide 6 for how each source’s LCOE reacts to rates.)

[1] https://www.twi-global.com/technical-knowledge/faqs/how-long...

> Not disputing, but where do you see this?

It was from slide 17, project lifetime (it was for combined with storage).

I looked more closely and it's actually 30 years (25 for residential) for solar, slide 37 (Key assumptions)- facility life row.

For wind, it assumes 20 years.

> the decision the Chinese government made to heavily subsidize solar manufacturing

This is often claimed, but does anyone have budget numbers or even a decent order of magnitude estimate for how much subsidy was applied here? Or was it actually the free market supplying compounding cost reductions through technological improvements?

There was a report from MIT a few years back that looked into the price reductions of solar between 1978 and 2012, during which time module costs fell by 97%.

They suggest that early on R&D support from government was key, then later market support to help grow the scale of deployment. Since 2001 its been manufacturing scale that has dominated price reductions.

MIT News article with link to the actual paper: https://news.mit.edu/2018/explaining-dropping-solar-cost-112...

It's claimed in the source economist article and reuters also claims it [1]. It's unlikely that the Chinese government wants to say how much it subsidizes, as this will prompt tariff increases from importing countries.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-solar-industry...

> does anyone have budget numbers or even a decent order of magnitude estimate for how much subsidy was applied

Cheap producer credit, covering up to 50% of new-facility costs and feed-in tariffs [1]. At least the latter began getting phased out after costing Beijing over $15bn in 2017 [2].

Haven’t run the precise numbers, but that one-year figure seems to line up with the IRA’s total solar package [3].

[1] https://chinafocus.ucsd.edu/2021/02/16/solar-energy-in-china...

[2] https://chineseclimatepolicy.oxfordenergy.org/book-content/d...

[3] https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1830

Thanks. [1] in particular is a very interesting read. If I understand it correctly, it's all through subsidy of generation rather than directly of manufacture? That is, while there might be subsidy ensuring demand for the product, if you purchase a solar panel from a Chinese producer at any time during this process there wasn't a direct subsidy included in that cost? Just a guarantee over that time of enough demand to keep the factory chugging along?

That is, it's identical to Western-style renewable subsidies?

> it's all through subsidy of generation rather than directly of manufacture

At least at the federal level, this seems to be the case.

> it's identical to Western-style renewable subsidies?

At least early on, most Western subsidies didn’t discriminate based on where the panel was produced. We also don’t have visibility into provincial books, where if how they treat coal is any indication, where the plants are there to buy coal from their coal mines, there is probably cross subsidy.

But given what we know, one could argue they’re structurally similar, at least in respect to what we’re doing now.

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