Posted on 02/01/2023 5:36:01 AM PST by FarCenter
In a mirror image of what the United States has been doing with semiconductor lithography technology, China has recently amended its rules to ban the export of several core solar panel technologies in order to maintain its leading status and global market share in the sector.
A solar panel on a rooftop may include a hundred pieces of silicon and China has the lead now in machinery to manufacture those. Now Chinese manufacturers have been forbidden to use their large silicon, black silicon and cast-mono silicon technologies overseas, according to the newly-amended export guidelines published by the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Science and Technology.
Chinese firms produce more than 80% of the world’s solar panels and modules but have faced heavy tariffs imposed by the United States over the past decade.
Some of them moved their facilities to Thailand and Malaysia to avoid the tariffs but Beijing does not want them to take their core technologies abroad.
Technology experts said China wanted to prevent India from becoming one of the world’s major solar panel suppliers.
(Excerpt) Read more at asiatimes.com ...
Solar-powered electricity generation panels are a niche product anyway, for use only in specialized applications, and never meant to be a prime power source.
I don’t see an overall downside to the CCP restricting export of this product to the rest of the world. Maybe now the electric power generation industry will return to more reliable sources.
Like nuclear.
The technology exists, and is of such modularity and compactness, the components could be hauled to site on a semi-trailer truck, setup could take only days, and power could be coming 24/7/365 flat-out for up to eight years before replacing the module.
This could be available NOW, and have the further advantage of using much smaller grids, or off the national grid altogether, helping to resist EMP attacks.
This will cause as much pain as Starbucks pulling out of Russia.
And who built the first solar factories in China to produce large format solar silicon?
Just another technology that the CCP stole from the West after we built a factory for them.
And only now is China worried about India, Malaysia and Thailand?
What is happening that is not being reported?
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