Slashdot Mirror
Prospects Darken For Solar Energy Companies
Hugh Pickens writes "Although global demand for solar power is still growing — about 8% more solar panels will be installed this year compared with 2010 — bankruptcies, plummeting stock prices and crushing debt loads are calling into question the viability of the solar energy industry that since the 1970s has been counted on to advance the world into a new energy age. Only a handful of manufacturers are now profitable in the face of too much capacity, which has contributed to a plunge in prices as government subsidies have been curbed. Prices for solar panels started 2011 near $1.60 per watt, but a buildup of inventory forced manufacturers into a fire sale toward the end of the second quarter that has pushed prices to near $1 per watt now. 'The prices that we're seeing today are likely not covering manufacturing costs in many cases,' says Ralph Romero. With at least seven solar-panel manufacturers filing for bankruptcy or insolvency in the last several months and six of the 10 largest publicly traded companies making solar components reporting losses in the third quarter, public-market investors are punishing the solar sector, sending shares down nearly 57% this year. Although winners are expected to emerge eventually, the question is how much more carnage there will be before that happens. 'The fact of the matter is, nobody really knows which solar companies will be pushed out of business or be forced to merge,' writes industry analyst Rodolfo Avalos. 'Nobody also knows how long it will take for the solar industry to improve even when the forecasted solar global demand for the next 5-10 years is quite promising.'"
The summary does not mention the actual need for prices on solar panels to drop to make them more viable, only on the economic repercusions of the shift in the market.
I thought to myself one day that this was one of the necessary evils or events in a free market economy, prices must shift and therefore allow more efficient companies and technologies to emerge. Any real change requires chaos.
You wanted change? Here you've got it.
What keeps the solar power industry from taking off is not the market. It's the subsidies that keep fossil fuels artificially cheap.
Subsidies like spending a trillion dollars to keep military control of producing countries, like fucking up the planet for the future generations, and so on.
This is why you subsidize research, not production.
Don't worry, I'm sure the invisible hand of the free market will step in and all will be OK.
That would be true if there weren't actors like China distorting prices in the market by dumping government-subsidized-manufacturing-produced solar panels on the market at below-cost rates in order to destroy foreign competition.
Free markets only work where there is a fair market. When governments step in to "tip the scales" in order to influence the market, there is no "free market". Same thing applies with Capitalism. As can be seen with the US, when the government steps in to prop up certain businesses and tear down others in an effort to engineer certain outcomes and societal directions, the result is not Capitalism, it's "Crony Capitalism", and that hasn't worked out so well for US citizens.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
People have gotten used to the idea that wealthy corporations and individuals own the U.S. government (and plenty of other governments as well). They shrug it off because there is no viable alternative to turn to.
With both major political parties completely in the pockets of the rich and powerful, where is there to turn? Even those Occupy protestors couldn't answer that when they were asked. Their whole deluded movement seems predicated on the idea that if they make enough noise, suddenly all the politicians are going to turn away from their bread-and-butter and become honorable men and women. It's quite an epic pipe dream.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Nixon was impeached for trying to illegally interfere with an election. As bad as political nepotism is, it's not as serious as fucking with the election process. If Nixon hadn't been pardoned, you could argue that he should have been prosecuted for treason.
Haliburton, which Cheney used to run, got 7 billion dollars in a no-bids contract for part of the Iraq reconstruction. When people complained, the government put the same contract up for bid and then manipulated the process so that only Haliburton could win. That's every bit as bad as the Solyndra scandal - and bank bailout bullshit at the end of Bush's term in office was every bit as ludicrous as bank bailout bullshit after Obama took over. They're all bad.
I take it as a given that anyone with enough resources to play in US politics at the national level is corrupt, in both major US political parties. I still vote according to the lesser of two evils philosophy - I view Obama as the pickpocket that still gets things right occasionally and his Republican opponents as a gang of devil worshipers conspiring to eviscerate any American who isn't hideously wealthy and sell his organs for a few pennies. Given that kind of choice, I'm going to go with the pickpocket every time.
It is a lesson we continually fail to learn: Industries built on government subsidy suffer when those subsidies begin to go away, even if the product itself is sound.
The lesson "we" continually fail to learn is that not everything is a vindication of one's favorite economic-religious theory. Every time there is an increase in demand for something, investments pour into the relevant industries far in excess of that demand, and most of those ventures fail before a handful of them succeed and become the dominant players. There's nothing magical about either the market or subsidies. Subsidies are just market forces, like weather influencing crop prices or international trade policy influencing imports and exports. The theoretical free market in which prices are not "manipulated" does not and cannot exist in the real world because it is ultimately based on human beings, and humans manipulate everything they can. It doesn't matter whether the influx of cash comes from subsidies or sales: companies benefit while the cash flows in, and they suffer when it stops flowing. Money is money.
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