Phred Dvorak and Andrew Mollica of The Wall Street Journal report that the U.S. is trying to play catchup in the solar panel supply chain. China controls most of the world’s solar supply chain with cheap labor and decades of experience. They write:
China has come to dominate every step of the long, complex manufacturing process for solar panels.
Part of the reason for that dominance, built over two decades, is that the cost of everything from electricity to labor is much cheaper there than in places such as the U.S. or Europe. More recently, the massive scale of China’s solar-manufacturing operations has become an advantage, as it attracts talent, research money and ecosystems of suppliers.
Now, as demand for renewable energy explodes, the U.S. is trying to build its own solar-manufacturing supply chain almost from scratch and supporting the effort with sizable subsidies.
Here’s what that will entail, and why it is so tough to go up against China. […]
Bottom line: China can make solar panels 44% cheaper than the U.S. can.
Read more here.
