U.S. Solar Company Bankruptcies a Boon for China

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/business/global/us-solar-company-bankruptcies-a-boon-for-china.html

U.S. Solar Company Bankruptcies a Boon for China

HONG KONG — The bankruptcy of three U.S. solar power companies in the past month, including Solyndra of California on Wednesday, has left China’s industry with a dominant sales position, almost three-fifths of the world’s production capacity and rapidly declining costs.

Some U.S., Japanese and European companies still have a technological edge, although seldom a cost advantage, over Chinese rivals, according to industry analysts. But loans at very low rates from state-owned banks in Beijing, cheap or free land from local and provincial governments across China, huge economies of scale and other cost advantages have transformed China from a minor player in the solar power industry into the main producer of an increasingly competitive source of electricity.

“The top-tier Chinese firms are kind of the benchmark now,” said Shayle Kann, a managing director of solar power studies at GTM Research, a renewable energy market analysis firm based in Boston. “Pricing is determined by where they price, and everyone else prices at a premium or discount to them.”

In addition to Solyndra, Evergreen Solar of Massachusetts and SpectraWatt of New York also filed for bankruptcy in August. BP Solar shut down its factory in Frederick, Maryland, last spring. Those bankruptcies and closings represent almost a fifth of the solar panel manufacturing capacity in the United States, according to GTM Research.

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[orwell]

1. So much for the dominance...

of "free market" capitalism.

Don't you just love ideological purity?

[Confusious]

2. China is a free market

a libertarian paradise almost. Cheaper always wins out in capaitalism.

"so much for the green jobs" is a better phrase.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. China moves in on Western solar power industries

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/china-moves-in-on-western-solar-power-industries-2347791.html

China moves in on Western solar power industries

By Stephen Foley in New York

Friday, 2 September 2011

China is emerging as the dominant force in the manufacture of solar panels in a world desperate for renewable sources of energy, as collapsing prices and disillusion over government subsidies has hobbled US efforts to take a lead in the development of the new industry.

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Congressman Henry Waxman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce said the bankruptcies "are unfortunate warnings that the United States is in danger of losing its leadership position in the clean energy economy of the future. We should be doing everything possible to ensure the US does not cede the renewable energy market to China and other countries."

China manufactured about 40 per cent of the solar panels produced in the world last year, from a standing start five years earlier, and the largest single producer is a Chinese firm called Suntech Power Holdings.

Some in the US solar industry have criticised the Chinese for heavily subsidising their own firms, via grants of land for manufacturing plants and cheap loans. The United Steelworkers union filed a lawsuit last year asking the federal government to investigate China's clean energy subsidies and other policies and to pursue the matter through the World Trade Organisation.

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