- Investing in alternatives has led to massive new industry that is improving the economy of those countries that do it. If your argument is an economic one then jump onto the solar, wind and battery bandwagon.
- There are virtually no real short medium or long term gains economically here. Gas is the only thing still competitive with solar/wind and its costs are rising while solar and wind continue to fall. Building new maximum pollution plants would drop that internalized cost but who in their right mind would fund something so obviously DOA?
- Obviously the externalized costs of greenhouse gas emissions are deeply undervalued in this move. Even if they are 'fake news' in the US, the rest of the world is finally starting to take them seriously. The US's diminished soft power means it won't be able to easily bully the world into allowing it to pollute without consequence and such an obviously hostile move means it will loose even more of its soft power by taking this position. So on the international level this means we burn a lot of political capital and gain nothing but decades of distrust and anger.
- Current events show that energy security is dominated by decoupling from fossil fuels. This weakens the US strategically and continues to set it up to be manipulated by exceptionally hostile actors.
- Oh yeah and, of course, climate change is real.
This continues the US down the path of being the best buggy whip maker in the world. Worse than that, the US is becoming an obnoxious buggy whip maker who's neighbors are starting to hope fails horribly and will help make that happen as moves like this continue. This is stupid at every scale and in every dimension.
The current wars in Europe and the Middle East paradoxically push the world towards non-fossil enery like few things did before. Both oil and natural gas prices have skyrocketed on global markets, and will likely rise more, as Ukraine continues to target Russian oil infrastructure, and Houtis continue to stymie Saudi oil exports.
Nothing hampers solar, wind, and batteries though; at worst it takes longer to ship the key components from China to Europe around Africa.
> Nothing hampers solar, wind, and batteries though;
For now.
The majority of solar panels are made in China (85%), and they plan to invade Taiwan in just a few years, possibly as soon as 2027, at which point either we let them take control of AI chip production or defend Taiwan and cut ourselves off from the source of almost all manufactured products, and especially solar panels.
But the solar panels we already have don't suddenly stop working, which is an important difference between sourcing solar panels from a potential enemy and sourcing raw fossil fuels from one. There's also nothing stopping the US or other trading partners from making solar panels, China is just the most convenient and cheapest source as it is for many other things. And to that point, the end of trade between the US and China would be incredibly damaging to both countries whether or not we buy solar panels from them now.
I asked Claude, and now I know that there are nice, basically undetectable, plausibly deniable ways to render solar panels useless within months, or, with some preparation, days. It seems that open-source, carefully scrutinized panel controller firmware may be critically important.
Your Claude may have been hallucinating - solar panels have no microcontrollers or microprocessors, and hence have no need for firmware. Battery Charge controllers -- that are downstream of panels do have firmware, but even if a booby-trapped firmware were to short-circuit the panels, they'd be undamaged.
Solar panels are usually connected to inverters or other power circuits that make the variable voltage they provide usable as a stable source downstream.
During operation a string of solar cells is under a pretty high voltage. It makes sodium ions from the covering glass infiltrate slowly into the silicon, potentially ruining the p-n junction ("potential-induced degradation", PID). Usually an industry-grade panel controller applies a reverse voltage during night time, to drive the sodium ions back from the silicon. A rogue controller might instead apply the same voltage, accelerating PID instead of reverting it (and kill it in several months). A really insidious producer might add a strip of extra sodium-rich material near the normal electric conductors, which would be triggered by voltage higher than normal operation to flood the silicon with sodium (and kill it in several days).
jmward01 · · focus · HN ↗
- Investing in alternatives has led to massive new industry that is improving the economy of those countries that do it. If your argument is an economic one then jump onto the solar, wind and battery bandwagon.
- There are virtually no real short medium or long term gains economically here. Gas is the only thing still competitive with solar/wind and its costs are rising while solar and wind continue to fall. Building new maximum pollution plants would drop that internalized cost but who in their right mind would fund something so obviously DOA?
- Obviously the externalized costs of greenhouse gas emissions are deeply undervalued in this move. Even if they are 'fake news' in the US, the rest of the world is finally starting to take them seriously. The US's diminished soft power means it won't be able to easily bully the world into allowing it to pollute without consequence and such an obviously hostile move means it will loose even more of its soft power by taking this position. So on the international level this means we burn a lot of political capital and gain nothing but decades of distrust and anger.
- Current events show that energy security is dominated by decoupling from fossil fuels. This weakens the US strategically and continues to set it up to be manipulated by exceptionally hostile actors.
- Oh yeah and, of course, climate change is real.
This continues the US down the path of being the best buggy whip maker in the world. Worse than that, the US is becoming an obnoxious buggy whip maker who's neighbors are starting to hope fails horribly and will help make that happen as moves like this continue. This is stupid at every scale and in every dimension.
nine_k · · focus · HN ↗
Nothing hampers solar, wind, and batteries though; at worst it takes longer to ship the key components from China to Europe around Africa.
jiggawatts · · focus · HN ↗
For now.
The majority of solar panels are made in China (85%), and they plan to invade Taiwan in just a few years, possibly as soon as 2027, at which point either we let them take control of AI chip production or defend Taiwan and cut ourselves off from the source of almost all manufactured products, and especially solar panels.
rainsford · · focus · HN ↗
nine_k · · focus · HN ↗
overfeed · · focus · HN ↗
nine_k · · focus · HN ↗
During operation a string of solar cells is under a pretty high voltage. It makes sodium ions from the covering glass infiltrate slowly into the silicon, potentially ruining the p-n junction ("potential-induced degradation", PID). Usually an industry-grade panel controller applies a reverse voltage during night time, to drive the sodium ions back from the silicon. A rogue controller might instead apply the same voltage, accelerating PID instead of reverting it (and kill it in several months). A really insidious producer might add a strip of extra sodium-rich material near the normal electric conductors, which would be triggered by voltage higher than normal operation to flood the silicon with sodium (and kill it in several days).
overfeed · · focus · HN ↗