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 an hour 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 21 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

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

	▲	remarkEon 7 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.