Why China, and not the US, is the leader in solar power. The solar panel was invented in the US. So why is the US not its biggest proponent? Policy. : energy

On the contrary, as panel costs have become a lower percentage of the total efficiency matters more in many cases.

They are still a commodity in most cases. An efficiency difference of a few percent isn’t a big deal. $/W is what everyone is looking at. Efficiency matters somewhat, but the US doesn’t have a secret sauce here. The physics needed to get better efficiency is pretty well known, it’s just a matter of scale. The really high efficiency stuff like multi-junction are still made in developed countries because they aren’t commodities.

You’ll note the US/Europe are still leaders in wind despite having the same policies as solar. They haven’t been commoditized yet because the Chinese ones are objectively inferior.

A study by NREL and MIT a few years ago concluded that China’s manufacturing cost advantage was in production scale and supply chain, not labor costs, pollution regulations or anything else country-specific. I think that’s just a stereotype.

Then why aren’t Germany and Japan leaders in this despite the huge incentives and subsidies they threw at it? Both had a 10-20 year head start on China and yet still lost. Why are all the new plants overwhelmingly in developing countries? Either the subsidies required are so massive that developed countries decided not to do it, or there is a definite cost advantage. And let’s even say it’s all policy: setting policy to compete on commodities is largely a bad idea because of what I wrote before. I can’t think of a single commodity item that the US successfully competed with in the world market (unless you count hollywood entertainment as a commodity). The US’ strength is in non-commodity items and services.

China has shown it is willing to go enormous lengths for economic wins, even if they are self-destructive (see ghost cities and their continued building of coal plants around the world).

Germany is known for leading in PV installations but I wasn’t aware its national strategy was to lead in manufacturing too. Any sources on that? Same for Japan.

Japan and Germany were world leaders in PV production until cheap Chinese panels came onto the scene. They simply couldn’t compete. I’d argue if it can’t succeed in Germany with the clear support they get, then it’s doubtful it’s going to work here.

Germany is known for leading in PV installations but I wasn’t aware its national strategy was to lead in manufacturing too. Any sources on that? Same for Japan.

Japan data is harder to find (probably because it’s all in Japanese) but Germany spent lots of R&D and manufacturing subsidies, and had the benefit of a head start. They also got EU support for it in terms of grants, loans, and guarantees. Also just to reinforce what I was saying before: you’ll notice that it says Germany exports a lot of PV manufacturing equipment to China. So again: non-commodity/speciality manufacturing stayed in Germany, the commodity stuff didn’t. This is a tale that has been told over and over again for over two centuries.