Solar dreaming

In the 2000’s China stole the solar manufacturing industry off the Europeans.

They could do this because solar was by then a generic commodity technology and they, the Chinese, had much cheaper finance, labour and just about everything else.

Plus they were unconstrained by any financial modelling of their return on investment (‘bugger it, let’s just steal the market and figure it out later’; and they still are trying to figure out how to make money).

The Europeans continue to whine at the unfairness of all this. But the battle is long lost. And yet they continue to spend billions on solar R&D from which the benefits flow to Chinese manufacturers and eventually back to the European solar generators.

Just yesterday a leading European solar academic proposed this:

“In the next battle, if we want to survive, why don’t we merge all the (solar) research centres in Europe? There are billions spent (on PV R&D) every year, but if there is no industry, what is the point? There is no point.”

You have to love academics. What battle? And there is no explanation as to why merging R&D efforts in Europe would change the inherent cost benefits of manufacturing in China, and probably no thought on this.

I have said it before, beware the genius with a single life experience (academia). They know a lot about one thing and therefore, without the benefit of new experiences where they are a novice all over again, believe they know everything about everything.

And indeed they rarely apply their supposed discipline of rational thinking outside of their own area of activity.

It’s a mystery and a fact at the same time.