Name: Solar Power is Booming. Could a Glut of Cheap Parts Make It a Bust?
Uploaded: 2023-11-14T22:30:00Z
Duration: 5 min 33 s
Description: China has invested tens of billions of dollars in building its solar panel manufacturing industry. But too many cheap parts could spell trouble for growing markets elsewhere in the world. Wall Street Journal reporter Phred Dvorak joins to explain why. Danny Lewis hosts. Photo: Hu Chengwei/Getty Images

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China has invested tens of billions of dollars in building its solar panel manufacturing industry. But too many cheap parts could spell trouble for growing markets elsewhere in the world. Wall Street Journal reporter Phred Dvorak joins to explain why. Danny Lewis hosts. Photo: Hu Chengwei/Getty Images

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Solar Power is Booming. Could a Glut of Cheap Parts Make It a Bust?

Danny: Welcome to "Tech News Briefing." It's Tuesday, November 14th. I'm Danny Lewis for the Wall Street Journal. Many countries are trying to turn off the fossil fuel pumps and turn toward renewable energy sources like solar power. China in particular has spent tens of billions of dollars last year alone to build up its clean energy manufacturing sector, especially the components needed to make solar panels, but could that boom turn into a bubble? Wall Street Journal reporter Phred Dvorak joins us now to talk about what that means for the global renewable energy economy. Phred, just a few years ago, solar power was really expensive, thanks in part to the costs of solar panels. How are lots of cheap components a bad thing for the industry?

Phred: Well, they're good for people and companies that want to install a lot of solar and a lot of solar deployers are happy about lower prices. And to be completely fair, because China has been doing this for decades and has pushed down the price of solar panels and components, we are now experiencing a solar boom, which is a very good thing. However, the flip side of that is that China controls the manufacturing for about 80%, and in some components like solar wafers, it's closer to 100%. And so it's a difficult proposition for countries like the US or a lot of the countries in Europe that expect to be installing a lot of solar and are worried about energy security. So those places, including the US, we wanna make our own solar industry. And it's not good for manufacturers to be competing with these very entrenched, very big and well-subsidized Chinese companies.

Danny: What has all this funding from China's government been going towards?

Phred: China is putting in a lot of government support and money and encouragement toward building up renewables. And so that's everything from installing wind and solar to building factories so that you have the goods to do that. And China has some very aggressive goals for installation of renewables and it's gonna surpass them. And when the Chinese government gives those sorts of national goals and encouragement, then the local governments jump in and they want to put money toward this as well. And so what you'll see is companies and in many cases, newcomers to the industry and they could be getting significant amounts of money from local governments to go toward their factories or they might be getting land. And so there's support at all different levels for this sort of thing in China.

Danny: So then what does this mean for those manufacturers in other countries? How are they responding to this glut of components?

Phred: Well, it depends on the country. The US and India are two countries with big pushes to build up domestic solar industries. The US has a bunch of tariffs on solar panels and cells. It has other measures that are non-tariff barriers that keep out panels that are made with Chinese polysilicon. And it has a lot of other things like the Inflation Reduction Act and subsidies that are encouraging domestic manufacturing. But Europe isn't so well-protected, doesn't have tariffs, and European manufacturers are much more exposed. They don't have the same level of subsidies either. So some of 'em are going bankrupt. Others are stopping production. A lot of them just haven't been able to sell. And this comes on top of an already really tough competitive environment. So they weren't doing super well to begin with. And just having to compete with a glut and prices that have plummeted recently for the components is really tough for them.

Danny: So if it does turn out that this component boom is going to become a bubble, what happens to the industry if that bubble pops?

Phred: The industry has had booms and busts many times before, and so eventually the capacity will even out, one hopes. But this one has been faster and sharper than others in the past, and it just comes at a bad time because it's right when the US and India and Europe are trying very hard to support nascent industries. And so it just makes it much harder for that to happen.

Danny: That's Wall Street Journal reporter Phred Dvorak. And that's it for "Tech News Briefing." Today's show was produced by Anthony Bansie with supervising producer Melanie Roy. I'm Danny Lewis for the Wall Street Journal in for Julie Chen. We'll be back tomorrow. Thanks for listening.

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