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

(www.newyorker.com)
353 points dmazin | 1 comments | 09 Jul 25 12:31 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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jonplackett ◴[10 Jul 25 08:19 UTC] No.44518605[source]▶
> 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.

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pshirshov ◴[10 Jul 25 08:25 UTC] No.44518646[source]▶
> 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?

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passwordoops ◴[10 Jul 25 09:33 UTC] No.44519072[source]▶
You forgot being too concerned with maintaining environmental and air quality regulations.

There's a reason Shanghai is known for really bad air quality. There's a reason the rate of GHG emissions are accelerating

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pshirshov ◴[10 Jul 25 12:16 UTC] No.44520144[source]▶
> maintaining environmental and air quality regulations

Yeah, that's the primary concern for the US, right.

> There's a reason the rate of GHG emissions are accelerating

If you wanted to say that they "produce solar panels with energy from fossils" bring your sources please.

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derektank ◴[10 Jul 25 14:20 UTC] No.44521421{3}[source]▶
The sarcasm seems unwarranted. The US has better air quality than any other country with over 50 million people and better air quality than the EU on average. Most of the countries above America on the list are either islands directly in the path of tradewinds, largely unpopulated, or the nordics. Now, a lot of this is simply the fact that Americans haven't embraced diesel and that America is a relatively low density country. But air quality is really quite good in most of the US. The Clean Air Act and other environmental legislation was very successful.
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pshirshov ◴[10 Jul 25 16:40 UTC] No.44522878{4}[source]▶
> The US has better air quality than any other country with over 50 million people and better air quality than the EU on average

And that remarkable achievement was only possible because the US does not produce evil solar panels on its soil, do I understand you right?

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1. derektank ◴[10 Jul 25 17:53 UTC] No.44523648{5}[source]▶
No? I didn't make the parent comment and I was mostly taking issue with the implication in your comment that US air quality was in some way deficient

But since you asked, while manufacturing solar panels does not itself pose a threat to air quality, environmental and air quality regulations obviously raise the cost of doing business in the manufacturing sector broadly, which makes the US less competitive up and down the supply chain than China. That's obviously not the entire story, but it's certainly part of it.