this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2024
241 points (99.2% liked)

World News

39032 readers
2251 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

Solar module production isn't labour-intensive, much less intensive in low-skill labour.

A bit more than a decade ago, Germany was the #1 producer of solar panels, drastically pushing down prices with advances in technology, manufacturing, and automation. Then the government decided to slash all subsidies (mostly about capping feed-in tariffs for solar), without warning, and without phase-out. Noone was prepared for that kind of thing so all the companies went belly-up and the Chinese swooped in, buying the tech for cheap with money borrowed from the Chinese taxpayer and began to produce panels and sell them, again subsidised by state coffers. We later slapped them with anti-dumping tariffs but by then the domestic industry was already decomposing.

It'd stiff be cost-effective to build solar panels in Germany, the degree of automation is so high that higher wages balance out with higher transportation costs.

Australia though don't get me started on Australia you're structurally a 3rd world economy reliant on export of raw goods. You're not even smelting that ore, just shovelling it onto ships.