China's world-beating solar industry is in turmoil | Hacker News Reader

China's world-beating solar industry is in turmoil

economist.com

11 pointsandsoitis6 comments

Yet another in the "Free market capitalism is weird and scary to us" series from the (increasingly poorly named) Economist.

Is it only China that freaks them out in this way? Is it to do with their long term sandbagging of anything related to climate change? It was only two years ago when they had a special "Solar power is actually a big deal" issue. And roughly the same time frame that they invited prominent anti-renewables advocate Bjorn Lomborg to write a column and praised his book.

The fact that they close with the suggestion that the introduction of even better and cheaper solar panels will in any way help the businesses they have discussed with giant factories that are already selling below their marginal cost is just silly. The continual improvement in a commodity product with big up front investment needed is the main reason being a solar manufacturer is a terrible business to be in.

The article was not about climate, it was about prospects for solar production and solar demand.

Is it possible that we see saturation with solar power production in Chinese electricity grid? With more solar installations will solar curtailment increase in China? Electricity storage is a possibility, but batteries in China compete with cheap coal power.

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/chinas...

Leaving aside some technical issues with that article there remains one giant elephant in the print sufficient to upend it.

The date: August 19, 2025

Ask yourself whether anything has happened globally since then that has caused orders for solar cells and batteries from outside China to dramatically increase.

Solar PV and climate are intimately linked in fact and in propaganda, don't be silly, but ignoring that.

It is entirely possible to cover a plateau in demand in an industry without being weirdly shrill about the idea of businesses losing out to competitors, their share prices going down, or being surprised that competition leads to lower profits.

Reminder:

Magazine title: The Economist.

Focus since its founding nearly 2 centuries ago: free trade and free markets.

A decent source, quoted in the article is Jenny Chase:

Her team is forecasting a plateau and no short term uptick from the war in Iran:

https://bsky.app/profile/solarchase.bsky.social/post/3mmypc2...

That's bad news for everyone, especially those sub-saharan markets in the graph that are not getting cheap electricity and so will remain poor.

Compared with share prices of Chinese panel manufacturers, that's worth writing articles about.

Solar PV, CO2 emissions and climate are linked, but not mentioned in the Economist article.

Lets look at share of solar electricity in production in year 2025

China 11,1 %

Germany 19 %

Chile 25,2 %

https://lowcarbonpower.org/region/People%27s_Republic_of_Chi...

https://lowcarbonpower.org/region/Germany

https://lowcarbonpower.org/region/Chile

Could China in coming decades reach German or Chile level of solar in electricity mix?

As mentioned in the @solarchase.bsky.social post, in absolute numbers there is very large potential for increase in solar production in China. As is also very large potential for increase in non-solar production in China. How will the solar share evolve?

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/charting-chinas-evol...

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