| ▲ | w10-1 12 hours ago |
| > Thanks to all the entrepreneurs and engineers over the past decades Hat tip also to China's ideological commitment to independence from external oil supplies, as nicely coupled to reducing pollution and greenwashing their image. It's their citizens who sacrifice to make solar power cheap enough. |
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| ▲ | chithanh an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| > It's their citizens who sacrifice to make solar power cheap enough. No. Manufacturing labor cost in China is not cheap. In fact since 2012 or so, it is more expensive than in most of Asia. Companies who want cheap labor look elsewhere. https://www.economist.com/business/2023/02/20/global-firms-a... (Archive link: https://archive.fo/tdhXJ ) China is also the only major economy where wages have increased at the same rate as GDP in the last 40 or so years. |
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| ▲ | adrianN an hour ago | parent [-] | | Solar panel construction is very easy to automate, I don’t think labor is a big driver of cost. |
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| ▲ | baxtr 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Like anything else that the world procures cheaply from China btw. |
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| ▲ | epolanski 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | At this point this is a cliche. There's tons of countries with much cheaper labor. The reasons we build in china are not related to cheap labor, this hasn't been the case from quite some time. | | |
| ▲ | hattmall 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Cheap labor is still a major factor, but infrastructure is definitely another. | | |
| ▲ | numpy-thagoras 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Most of the time, I don't personally look at it as cheap labour because I am just ordering, e.g. 60,000 of something or 100,000 of something else. It's cheap, yes. I can indeed buy 1,000 of something more locally or from other than China. But when it comes to scale, needing vast shipments, then they are the ones who can actually ship it and do it reliably. It just also happens to be cheaper, too, which is more of a convenience or cherry on top, than the actual attractive part: vast scale. | |
| ▲ | nandomrumber 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And trust, probably the most valuable commodity. Three or four decades of proven ability to deliver, trusted relationships. Even despite all the political noise. | | |
| ▲ | typpilol 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | The industry basically treats any designs sent to China as a loss since they know it will be duplicated I don't think trust has much to do with it | | |
| ▲ | melagonster 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If you know it will happen, it is a part of price. | |
| ▲ | gffrd 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I believe Parent is talking about trust in the ability to deliver on promises, not in handling of IP. | | |
| ▲ | typpilol 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Oh I agree. But I'd say trust is the wrong word They're reliable, but would you really trust them? I think there's a bit of nuance there to differentiate the 2 though. Maybe I'm jaded from working with overseas factories though in ways others wouldn't be. | | |
| ▲ | nandomrumber 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Are you saying you don’t reverse engineer your competitors, and friends, products? |
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| ▲ | blitzar an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | China sent tiktok the the US, the gifted geniuses of silicon valley duplicated it and when that was garbage they just took it and said "we own this now" |
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| ▲ | esseph 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's not remotely cheap. A long time ago the cheap labor moved from places like China to places like Mexico, which is one of the reasons so many automotive manufacturing plants there - just a rail ride across the border. Now that hasn't been the case for more than a decade. The cheap labor is in SE Asia and South America. What China has is decades of process improvement, factories, infrastructure, experience, and a willingness to work. They haven't been the cheapest, by far, for a long while. |
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| ▲ | mensetmanusman 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The older generation made huge sacrifices with no wage growth because the CCP kept the currency low. This allowed for China to choose industries it would dominate outside of economic forces. It chose to dominate solar and was allowed to sell panels below raw materials cost in order to kill competition. In one hand it’s good for world solar, on the other hand this has helped cause the rise of the far right all over the west. | | |
| ▲ | stickfigure 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | > The older generation made huge sacrifices with no wage growth ...and poured their savings into the sole investment available, real estate, creating the largest bubble the world has ever seen... | | |
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| ▲ | worik 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This I recal, the 1980s when Japanese manufacturing was dogy as. By 2000 it was the best The same thing is happening in China They are very good at everything they do, and getting better. Good. | | |
| ▲ | usefulcat 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't now about Japanese manufacturing per se, but I definitely wouldn't say that finished Japanese products were considered dodgy in the 80s. Sony, Panasonic, Honda, Toyota, various camera brands, Yamaha.. I recall all of those being at least "pretty good". I definitely remember the sense that Japanese cars posed a real threat to the American auto industry, and in hindsight that seems to have been well founded. | | |
| ▲ | coffeebeqn 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Nintendo! That was definitely not their reputation in the 80s it was top notch |
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| ▲ | blackoil 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You are right except off by couple of decades. So 60s to 80s. | |
| ▲ | lll-o-lll 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Japanese manufacturing was dodgy in the 80’s? I don’t think so. “What do you mean doc? All the best stuff is made in Japan” “Unbelievable” | | |
| ▲ | kilpikaarna 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | That's the entire point of the joke, yeah. Japanese manufacturing was dodgy in the 50s-60s but great by the 80s. Korean manufacturing might've been considered dodgy in the 80s but great by 2000. Taiwan (ROC) went through this also (70s vs 90s, ish?). And now China. |
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| ▲ | metalman 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| the vast majority of solar panels are imaculately concieved in fully automated factorys,some where in fact there are NO people and they turn the lights off, as the robots are blind to those frequencys anyway.
surviving solar PV production facilities operate on razor thin margins, and gargantuan volumes, the results of which are the electrification of most of the world, useing the absolute minimum of carbon.
first lights, and dev8ces, small appliences, then the next step will be universal access to clean water and refrigeration, and then the worlds largest continent will be something to recon with. |
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| ▲ | Incipient 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This is a very rosy picture, unfortunately to the point of delusion. There are huge questions about the labour used in various stages, and the production of some of the raw materials is environmentally questionable. | | |
| ▲ | epolanski 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | Sure, but most of it happens in countries beyond china. In any case, I literally have a cousin who's lived ten years in China building a 3d printing company, and the last reason he went to China was cheaper labor, that was borderline irrelevant. |
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| ▲ | zer00eyz 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > the vast majority of solar panels are imaculately concieved in fully automated factorys What? https://insights.issgovernance.com/posts/forced-labor-in-the... Yes there is a bunch of automation in there, and still a ton of manual work and re-work. And it is done by the lowest cost labor, with a hefty government subsidy (by china) and a purchasing program. | | |
| ▲ | cyberax 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | This is pretty much bunk. There really is _very_ little space for manual unqualified work in solar panel manufacturing. Does the supply chain contain less-than-free labor somewhere? Likely. Most probably somewhere in the raw material production, but it's not something that is a deciding factor in anything. These materials just as well likely go into making of iPhones and Lenovo laptops. | | |
| ▲ | zer00eyz 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Unloading, Frame assemblies, testing, Cleanup of any failed products (this is skilled labor)... Packaging and loading. This is at the plant that does panel assembly (joining silicon to packaging). The problem is that "Highly automated" does not mean "free of people" ... the demand for low skill labor (and a fair amount of it to keep up with automated processes) is still required. The cost of labor in china remains so low (on the whole) that these things are still not only feasible but cost effective. | | |
| ▲ | bad_haircut72 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yeh USA could doninate this if only the price of a guy to load panels onto a truck wasnt so high /obvious sarcasm |
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| ▲ | mensetmanusman 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | pcchristie 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This is a myth: https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths Because of the efficiency of the EV motor vs. the ICE motor, EVs are far cleaner than ICEVs even when fossil-fuel-powered and that's not factoring in the (slow) cleaning of the grid which will widen that gap over time, as the other comment mentioned. | |
| ▲ | 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Since the beginning of 2025 coal usage has started to decline in absolute numbers in China. China builds enough renewables and storage to both absorb grid growth and displace existing coal plants. | |
| ▲ | petesergeant 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Right, but you can switch an EV to a clean source of energy in the future, which you can't do with a petrol car (until carbon-capture fuel becomes viable) |
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| ▲ | badpun 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Some of the sacrifice is not voluntary - most panels contain parts and/or materials made by slaves in work camps. |
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| ▲ | perihelions 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I.e., https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/01/business/economy/solar-xi... ("Solar Supply Chain Grows More Opaque Amid Human Rights Concerns" / "The global industry is cutting some ties to China, but its exposure to forced labor remains high and companies are less transparent, a new report found") | |
| ▲ | omnimus 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Just like iPhones. | | |
| ▲ | epistasis 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | I think it's a bit different, I never heard a story of iPhones being manufactured like this: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57124636 However most of the "slave" talk these days comes from highly politicized sources, so it's hard to cut through to the truth. For example, it's not likely that there's enough Uyghur slave labor to be involved with "most" of the polysilicon even from Xinjiang, much less the entire world's supply. IMHO, like the cobalt getting mined by children from artisanal-scale mines in Africa, it's a very serious issue that gets trotted out more as a political football against the entire technology, rather than expressed as an earnest concern to solve the underlying problem. | | |
| ▲ | aeonfox 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > IMHO, like the cobalt getting mined by children from artisanal-scale mines in Africa Not really an issue for solar battery systems as they typically use the cheaper LFP chemistry that has a much higher cycle count. The gravimetric density is a bit less, but that only really matters for high-performance mobility. | | |
| ▲ | nandomrumber 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | You responded to a comment about cobalt with vague references to cell chemistry, cycle count, and energy density. What does any of that have to do with cobalt? | | |
| ▲ | dgacmu 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | The post you're replying to didn't explain it well, but: LFP batteries don't use cobalt (or nickel). LFP production is starting to pass NMC (lithium + nickel manganese cobalt oxide). Slightly lower density but a lot of advantages in lack of easily catching on fire, longer lifetime -- and lack of cobalt. LFP (LiFePo4) is the battery chemistry of choice today for solar installations, where the longer lifetime and increased safety are a big win and the slightly lower density doesn't matter, unlike mobile applications. | | |
| ▲ | aeonfox 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | I suppose I could have been clearer, but I figure it was an easy connection tom make from talking about chemistry to the question of whether cobalt is even relevant. |
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| ▲ | bdangubic 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > I think it's a bit different nice to discuss the degrees of slavery, little slavery is cool, little more perhaps not as much… | | |
| ▲ | epistasis 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Talking about degrees of slavery is decidedly not cool. If you have documentation of iPhone supply chain using forced labor like I linked to, please do share rather than trying to be morally ambiguous. | | |
| ▲ | nandomrumber 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You linked to a four and a half year old news article from a highly politicised source. I wouldn’t call that “documentation”. | | | |
| ▲ | Teever 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I wonder how much solar energy produced from these slave-built panels makes its way into iPhones. |
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| ▲ | vkou 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Here in the US, the thirteenth amendment seems to think that a little slavery is cool. As I understand it, much of the rest of the world has similar views, but I'm sure this varies a bit from country to country. It's just that in the 21st century, we prefer to use some less-upsetting euphemism to refer to the practice domestically. | | |
| ▲ | rmunn 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Here in the US, the thirteenth amendment seems to think that a little slavery is cool. For anyone not familiar with the US Constitution, the 13th Amendment forbids slavery and involuntary servitude "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." Without that "except as a punishment for [a] crime" clause, being sentenced to N hours of community service would be forbidden by the Constitution, and the second-lowest penalty judges could impose (the lowest being a fine) would be prison time. So that clause was actually necessary to include in order to allow for more lenient sentences for crimes that deserve something more severe than a fine: lowest level of sentencing is a fine, after that comes being sentenced to community service (which most people agree is less severe than prison, even though it does count as involuntary servitude), and then after that come the more severe sentences like prison. | | |
| ▲ | mattclarkdotnet 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Most other countries seem to be able to have community service orders without labelling it “servitude”. Do you have a reference for why community service is defined as servitude in the US? | | |
| ▲ | rmunn 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Are you saying that being ordered by a judge to perform work, without pay, and which you would not have done absent those orders, does not fit the definition of involuntary servitude? Because while the precise definitions of servitude do vary from dictionary to dictionary, and some define it more harshly than others, in general it fits. One definition I found online (with no reference to which dictionary it came from) defines servitude as "A condition in which an individual is bound to work for another person or organization, typically without pay." Another one (Cambridge dictionary) says it's "the state of being under the control of someone else and of having no freedom". I couldn't check the Oxford English Dictionary as it requires a subscription to look up even one word. Merriam-Webster lists two meanings, one of which applies to land. the one that applies to people is "a condition in which one lacks liberty especially to determine one's course of action or way of life". Now, being sentenced to community service is only a temporary condition of servitude, which ends as soon as a given number of hours have been served. And it might not fit the strict definition if the person being sentenced is allowed to choose the form their community service will take; I lack knowledge of what kinds of community-servitude sentences are commonly handed out. But if the person being sentenced does not get to choose the form his community service will take, but instead is told "Your community service will be served in the city clerk's office. Show up at 9:00 AM on Monday ready to make photocopies and run errands," then that counts as being under the control of another and lacking freedom during the period of community service. It's not a permanent state of servitude, but even a temporary state of servitude is forbidden by the 13th amendment (other than as a sentence for a crime), because otherwise people at the time would have argued "Oh, fifty years of involuntary servitude still counts as 'temporary', so I'm allowed to carry on with imposing debt peonage on my debtors." (I should also mention that I am not a lawyer, so perhaps US lawyers have already reached broad consensus on whether community service counts as involuntary servitude under US law; if someone knows whether that's true, I welcome being corrected on my point). | | |
| ▲ | mattclarkdotnet 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | The context for the 13th amendment was that slavery was legal in the US then. It mostly wasn’t in other countries, so they never had to try to find the language to allow judicial punishments while disallowing private slavery. If you are given a community service orders without labelling in the UK for example, nobody thinks it’s slavery or servitude, they just think it’s a valid sentence under the law. The grey area is probably around profiting off such work? | | |
| ▲ | rmunn 18 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > It [slavery] mostly wasn't [legal] in other countries [at the time the 13th Amendment was passed, i.e. the mid 1860's]... The history of the 19th century and when slavery was abolished in each one is actually a fascinatingly complex subject, and there's tons of interesting history hiding behind your word "mostly", to the point where I can't actually tell whether "mostly" is a correct or incorrect description. Judging by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slave... I would lean towards "definitely correct in Europe and the Americas, a lot murkier in Africa and Asia". Oddly enough, a lot of Spanish colonies in South America abolished slavery before the United States did, yet Spain itself didn't pass its law ending slavery until a year after the US's 13th Amendment came into effect. If you're at all interested in the history of that era, the film Amazing Grace, though it takes a few liberties with the historical facts, is a mostly-accurate depiction of what it took to get slavery abolished in the United Kingdom. Interestingly, the part of Prime Minister William Pitt was played by a then-unknown Benedict Cumberbatch (Amazing Grace came out in 2006, and most people first discovered Cumberbatch when Sherlock came out in 2010). I recommend the film if you enjoy historical films; it's quite fun. (I love the "I would have been bored by botany" line). |
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| ▲ | ta20240528 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The conditions in the 'Angola' prison in Louisiana are a lot closer to slavery than community service. |
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| ▲ | bdangubic 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | fascinating reading here on HN every now again someone taking a moral high ground on some random shit while actively using products and services of some of the most evil corporations in the history of mankind |
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| ▲ | 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | AuthAuth 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I dont think China deserves that hat tip. Their "commitment" was done years after all the major nations had committed to emissions reduction and seems to have only been done so they could sell the solution. They've made little attempt to reduce emissions and instead scaled their industrial base to capitalize on the demand from nations working to reduce their carbon footprint. The only thing they've done to greenwash their image is spend money buying articles that present the false image of a green china. |
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| ▲ | samtheDamned 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | besides toomuchtodo's nicely made argument, I would like to point that that many "major" nations (I'm assuming that refers to mostly western countries, correct me if I'm wrong) were able to focus on committing to emissions because they gave their dirty work (ie: mass manufacturing, waste disposal, resource extraction) to other countries, especially China. | | |
| ▲ | AuthAuth 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | toomuchtodo's arugments are deluded and ill respond to those in a bit. But I want to be clear that no one "gave" their dirty work to china. Industry in all these countries were priced out. The Western and Asian governments increased environmental regulations and the cost to do business rose. In China the government ignored its climate obligations and slashed environmental regulations and increased coal investment to drive energy costs down and thus the manufacturing moved there. You think Germany couldnt have cut environmental regulations slapped down a few coal plants and made solar panels? Thats why there was climate meetings to get everyone on the same track. If everyone is aligned in their goals then the economic hurt is easier to bare. China intentionally captialised on this and I do not think they deserve any praise for it. |
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| ▲ | toomuchtodo 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This isn't factually accurate at all, and I would encourage some research so your statements can be more accurate. https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/china-energy-transi... https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/wind-and-solar-gener... https://electrek.co/2025/09/02/h1-2025-china-installs-more-s... > Global solar installations are breaking records again in 2025. In H1 2025, the world added 380 gigawatts (GW) of new solar capacity – a staggering 64% jump compared to the same period in 2024, when 232 GW came online. China was responsible for installing a massive 256 GW of that solar capacity. For context, it took until September last year to pass the 350 GW mark. This year, the milestone was achieved in June. That pace cements solar as the fastest-growing source of new electricity generation worldwide. In 2024, global solar output rose by 28% (+469 terawatt-hours) from 2023, more growth than any other energy source. Nicolas Fulghum, senior energy analyst at independent energy think tank Ember, said, “These latest numbers on solar deployment in 2025 defy gravity, with annual solar installations continuing their sharp rise. In a world of volatile energy markets, solar offers domestically produced power that can be rolled out at record speed to meet growing demand, independent of global fossil fuel supply chains.” https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65064 > Utility-scale solar power capacity in China reached more than 880 gigawatts (GW) in 2024, according to China’s National Energy Administration. China has more utility-scale solar than any other country. The 277 GW of utility-scale solar capacity installed in China in 2024 alone is more than twice as much as the 121 GW of utility-scale solar capacity installed in the United States at the end of 2024. Planned solar capacity projects will likely lead to continued growth in China’s solar capacity. More than 720 GW of solar capacity are in development: about 250 GW under construction, nearly 300 GW in pre-construction phases, and 177 GW of announced projects, according to the Global Solar Power Tracker compiled by Global Energy Monitor. https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/20/chinas-coal-generation-... > China’s coal-fired electricity generation took an unexpectedly sharp turn downward in the first quarter of 2025, signaling a potentially profound shift in the world’s largest coal-consuming economy. This wasn’t merely a seasonal dip or economic distress signal; rather, it represented a clear and structural turning point. Coal generation fell by approximately 4.7% year over year, significantly outpacing the overall grid electricity supply decline of just 1.3%. However, electricity demand, a better measure, went up by 1%. What gives? https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/08/21/china-clean-renewable-e... > China’s Decarbonization Is So Fast Even New Coal Plants Aren’t Stopping It. In multiple sectors—transportation, renewable energy, and overall electrification—the clear trend is toward a greener energy system. In fact, in areas like renewables and electric vehicles, China is now the world’s leading player. With the United States essentially abandoning the field, it will become even more dominant. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/26/china-breaks-m... > China’s installations of wind and solar in May are enough to generate as much electricity as Poland, as the world’s second-biggest economy breaks further records with its rapid buildup of renewable energy infrastructure. China installed 93 GW of solar capacity last month – almost 100 solar panels every second, according to an analysis by Lauri Myllyvirta, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute. Wind power installations reached 26 GW, the equivalent of about 5,300 turbines. (it is somewhat irrelevant that China has accomplished spinning up a clean tech machine of this scale out of energy security reasons, as it still accomplishes the goal of decarbonizing their economy first, and then, the rest of the world as their spun up manufacturing flywheel exports cheap clean tech to the world) https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e... | |
| ▲ | epolanski 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > They've made little attempt to reduce emissions They are a growing economy of a billion + people. You need to realize this is a population that was virtually 90% poor just 3 decades ago. |
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