Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

> Instead of relying on scattered deposits of fossil fuel—the control of which has largely defined geopolitics for more than a century—we are moving rapidly toward a reliance on diffuse but ubiquitous sources of supply. The sun and the wind are available everywhere

I’m all for solar - but does it really solve the geographical / geopolitical issues of oil, as it’s currently rolling out?

China produces pretty much all the solar panels - That’s quite a big concentration of power, even more so than oil.

> China produces pretty much all the solar panels

Why didn't other countries build up solar industries? Were busy with fossils? Were too greedy to subsidise?

Like everything else in manufacturing, economy of scale wins.

There's been plenty of subsidization efforts, but they made the mistake of subsidizing technologies that were too innovative and too early on in the scaling curve. e.g. Solyndra with CIGS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra

> Between 2009 and mid-2011 the price of polysilicon, the key ingredient for most competing technologies, dropped by about 89% due to Chinese advances in the Siemens process.

"Massive cost reduction in the existing, boring, process" beat "new technology". Possibly for the best in this case, since CIGS and CdTe are poisonous in a way that polysilicon isn't.

Apparently the Chinese solar industry are baffled by the US obsession with Solyndra.

It makes so little objective sense to be that angry about a failed investment in new tech that they thought there was something deeper going on that they didn't understand.

edit: I tried to Google for the source of this, but was stymied by the fact that Solyndra tried to sue Chinese manufacturers.

I did find this time capsule commentary on an NYT piece about how Chinese renewables were about to collapse back in 2012:

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/10/ch...

The story, the blog take and the unhinged comments do a lot to explain USA losing out.

Not that all of the comments are unhinged, one upvoted to the top actually applies basic economic thinking and suggests this is just counteracting negative externalities and therefore the smart move to anyone with the eyes to see the facts clearly.

Second edit: extra context is that the blogger is funded by Charles Koch:

https://www.desmog.com/mercatus-center/