Big Green means dependency on Chicoms

 Power Line:

We have been writing for a long time about the fact that transitioning from fossil fuels to wind and solar energy is catastrophically bad policy, not only because those forms of energy are intermittent and therefore inadequate, but also because China dominates the market for wind turbines and solar panels. Going “green” means turning over our economy–our lives–to the Chinese Communist Party.

This issue has been a dark secret if you rely on liberal news outlets for information, but now a glimmer of reality seems to be breaking through. I haven’t seen this reported domestically, but the Guardian has the story: “Breaking from China’s clean energy dominance ‘imperative’, US and Australia say after new climate tech deal.”

In a joint press conference in Sydney, the US energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, and the Australian climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, announced a “net zero technology acceleration partnership”, including an initial focus on long-duration energy storage and digitising power grids.

They said the agreement was motivated in part by the need for a clean energy and critical mineral supply chain that did not depend as much on China, which is responsible for about 80% of solar energy technology manufacturing. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), it is expected to reach 95% by 2025.

Why might that be? It’s because Chinese solar panels are made in large part by slave labor, i.e. Uyghurs. It is hard to compete with slave labor on price. Also, Chinese factories are fueled by coal, giving them another price advantage. If we really want to have a domestic solar panel industry–I don’t, but let’s assume the Biden administration does–one obvious solution would be to impose heavy import duties on Chinese solar panels. But that would expose the ridiculous cost of solar energy, and, anyway, tariffs are Trumpian.

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Of course, the U.S. was never reliant on Russia for energy, at least not during the Trump administration. A sensible policy would be to maximize production of U.S. oil and gas so that our allies can rely on us, not on the Russians and not on the Chinese. But that approach is not on the table.

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There is nothing sensible about Big Green.  It is at the heart of US inflation and energy dependency both on China and the oil imports from the Middle East and Russia.  It is an absolute disaster that has led to inflation and war in Ukraine.