This is gas brain thinking.

Solar panels are not gas. You don't burn them to make energy.

There is no dependency on solar panel manufacturers. Once you install a panel it's going to make electricity for the next 25 years. At least. After that you can recycle it and use it another 25 years.

Reactors on the other hand require fuel that is consumed. Unless you can mine it yourself, you're just trading an oil dependency for a uranium dependency.

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remarkEon 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And this is two dimensional thinking.

PRC has spent the better part of the last two decades gobbling up the supply chains that feed into solar panel manufacturing. Suppose you and I, being experienced technologists and enterprising individuals, decided tomorrow that we were going to start a solar panel manufacturing company. Surely this will be a growing, potentially high margin business because demand will be high if we're electrifying everything because of the aforementioned energy crisis. We are going to run head first into a wall of raw materials supply that is controlled by ... China.

So my point is that if you want to flip the energy generation to "green" and solar on some aggressive timeline, you are going to be dependent on China to do so. There are very obvious geopolitical reasons for why this is a very dumb idea. One of the ways I gauge how serious someone is about moving energy generation in the United States to solar is if they are okay with opening up closed mines so we can produce the rare earths, here, that are needed to manufacture the panels themselves. If they're cool with that, great, let's get stared. If they aren't, then they're not serious and are bandwagoning.

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triceratops 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And I'm saying the US doesn't need to bother with rare earth mining as long as China is happy to export their panels. Buy as many as they sell. Build up a strategic panel reserve.

If they ever stop, use the reserve and gas plants to backstop. Spend the next 20 years developing domestic PV manufacturing capability, safe in the knowledge that your current panels are good for at least that long.

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remarkEon 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Okay, thanks for letting me know you are not serious.

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triceratops an hour ago | parent [-]

I'm not sure you understand much if you can seriously write

> Surely [PV manufacturing] will be a growing, potentially high margin business because demand will be high

I'm not aware of it being a high margin business now for any Chinese company, and that's with their aforementioned advantages in labor and mining. This is a product whose price has fallen 99% in the past 2 decades. What margin?

If you still want to re-open rare earth mines in the US knowing the economics, and you can follow American environmental and labor standards, then be my guest. It doesn't strike me as a lucrative opportunity but what do I know.

	▲	remarkEon an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Sounds like moving to PV for electricity generation is a risky option, since maybe margins won't be so high if they're made here in the US and the economics just don't work for manufacturing from scratch. Perhaps we should consider other options, like the magic rocks we can find in the woods that get really hot when you hold them close together. This way, we can simplify our supply chains and have a reliable supply of energy that doesn't rely on a hostile geopolitical rival, and doesn't require the costly transition of the grid that we'd need to do if we went all in on PV.

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jhanschoo 24 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Today's mainstream solar panels use abundant, widely available materials.

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remarkEon 10 minutes ago | parent [-]

Feels like PV boosters these days are just completely and totally unaware of where these things actually come from and who controls the material supply chain.

	▲	defrost 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Your feelings are likely off - most people know that the materials used in solar panels are widely available across the globe and that China dominates the manufacturing process due to the US abdicating interest in manufacturing and renewables.

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asdff 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There is a dependency considering these are evidently valid targets for missiles

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triceratops 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't know what you're referring to. Do you mind rephrasing?

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asdff 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Energy infrastructure has been targeted in the Iran-Israel-US conflict. Solar is just as liable as petroleum infrastructure has been. People think petroleum has some unique risk here. Really it is energy being targeted by military means. Doesn't matter how a nation or economy sources its energy, it will be a high value target.

Consider if the entire world was solar powered today. Iran targets solar plants in the gulf states instead. Gulf states target iran solar plants. Prices of panel materials surge just like oil prices surge today in response to the demand brought on to the supply chain. Maybe Iran wants to twist the knife, sends submarines to target solar supply chain networks directly either in shipping at sea or to be closer to shelling or missile striking mining or production facilities.

The world is all too easy to disrupt in the very same way it is being disrupted in terms of oil today, thanks to the asymmetries brought on by drone and missile warfare in this new era.

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pibaker 44 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> Solar is just as liable as petroleum infrastructure has been.

Oil and gas infrastructure is full of choke points like pipelines, port facilities, storage facilities and large, concentrated refineries that supply entire country's worth of fuel. There is no central choke point in a solar based grid.

> Iran targets solar plants in the gulf states instead.

A drone exploding in a solar plant will take out what, a couple hundred solar panels? The rest will keep working once you blow the dust off.

You set one oil storage tank on fire and it takes care of everything else in its vicinity.

Not to mention solar can be truly decentralized. You can just buy a solar panel, plug it in your outlet and start generating electricity. You can turn every house into a solar power plant if you want and an enemy will have to bomb every house to get them offline.

> Maybe Iran wants to twist the knife, sends submarines to target solar supply chain networks directly either in shipping at sea or to be closer to shelling or missile striking mining or production facilities.

Iran will totally just go to war against china to prevent more solar panels from being made, yeah.

	▲	remarkEon 28 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		>There is no central choke point in a solar based grid. The distribution becomes the target, not the generation. I agree with most of the other things you're saying, about how I can generate a small amount of electricity on my own if I buy a PV system. That's irrelevant, however.

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triceratops 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

As terrible as the human cost would be if Iran and the other Gulf states were to target each others' solar plants, it would be contained to tha region. India, and China, and America, and Africa, and Europe's PV would continue to generate electricity. Compared to what we have now, where a war in one part of the world makes energy expensive everywhere else.

Not to mention: PV generation is way more distributed than drilling oil and gas. Commercial PV generation facilities are smaller and more spread out. And even if the enemy bombs them all in a war, you can disconnect your rooftop solar panels from the grid and keep your house going. Do you have an oil well and refinery in your backyard?

I'll repeat it again: you don't burn solar panels to make energy. We need growing numbers of panels today because we're going solar. If the world were already at 100% solar then we wouldn't need nearly as much manufacturing or mining. We'd mostly just recycle old panels.

This is unlike fossil fuels. If you burn gas you will always need new gas. Forever.