Those are not the same kind of subsidy. there is quite a lot more ambiguity and uncertainty in the type of subsidy because it is claiming mispricing of externalities (i.e your usage caused x harm and you didnt pay for x harm) rather than the variety the renewables industry mostly gets which is a direct injection of cash through grants and various price supports.
Much of the forced and child labor used in solar panel production, mining, and transport, as with everything else in China's production systems, goes completely unacknowledged and unaccounted for in these navel gazing expeditions.
With all those corners cut to mass produce cheap materials like batteries and solar panels and computers and so forth, China is able to undercut production that utilizes ethical and sustainable production. I don't think you can look at China's production "costs" as legitimate data, and the problem doesn't seem to be one that anyone outside of China will ever fix. The extent of the influence the rest of the world has over the problem lies entirely in our ability to not do business with China.
When you look at all the savings you get when buying electronics and solar panels and infrastructure related products coming out of China, you're getting a human suffering discount. I don't think it's a good thing to include those numbers when considering long term things like fossil fuel dependencies and so forth - let's not bake in the human suffering discounts and at least try to price in human rights and humane labor practices.
It turns out a lot of things are way more expensive when factory workers and shippers and everyone in a supply chain get paid fair wages and work fair hours.
This isn't to say anything in favor of fossil fuels, I just think the immediate plight of China's factory workers might be an important factor relevant to the actual costs in play.
Do you know of any credible sources/references that have attempted to quantify that "human suffering discount?" I'm genuinely curious.
My impression is that China simply has the Solar industry established. It's a bit like semi-conductors in Taiwan, the knowledge, practice, and facilities are present. It takes a significant investment to build factories. To that extent, it also raises the question what percentage of solar panel costs is labor, vs capital investments, vs raw material.
I do not discount the statement/concern. At the same time, I don't think the other end of the spectrum is true where we could say "we could do it too if we also used child labor." I do think it's the case where Chinese manufacturing capacity of solar panels is simply superior compared to any other country. It's a massive capital investment and commitment to enable that much production capacity. At 80% the global production of all solar panels, China has an army of solar production factories.
From what I could find (none of which was satisfying conclusive), it looks like there is a very considerable raw material cost for solar panels, and the manufacturing process is also complicated. [1][2]
Yes, things would be more expensive if workers had more rights. I don’t see how that is an argument against or in favor of any particular energy source.
Further, if workers’ well-being are your main consideration (admirable), we should be moving away from coal as quickly as possible.
> if workers’ well-being are your main consideration (admirable), we should be moving away from coal as quickly as possible.
I'm pro renewables and I'm happy to see the back of coal . . .
however ...
Australia is the second biggest biggest exporter of coal, uses no child labour, is heavily mechanised with a small number of workers compared to tonnage moved, has excellent worker conditions in terms of safety, paid overtime, holidays, etc.
You point appears to be based in some Appalachian romance notion of tunneling out coal with pickaxes and coal carts pulled by children.
I find this an interesting statistics, in 2023 there were 36.5k total people employed in the US coal industry. [1] It's simply just not a lot of people in the grand scheme. That speaks to how industrialized coal production is in the US - it doesn't take that many people to do mountain top removal and drive heavy machinery.
FWIW & for comparison, Circuit city at its peak employed 40k people, that's more people than the US Coal industry employs today [2]
Proponents of renewables often cite the price and use it as an argument against nuclear energy. Nuclear energetics uses highly regulated local labor, giving it an inherent disadvantage against unregulated foreign labor. If renewables rely on underpaid or even child labor, it's not sustainable nor realistic, the numbers in that calculation have to be updated and the decisions reconsidered.
The entire U.S. tax code is one big Central Planning committee. Who should get subsidies? Who should get taxed? The capitalists who celebrated the luxury of American supermarkets over Soviet grocery stores failed to mention the significant farm subsidies given then (and still given).
There’s an old joke of a woman who agrees to sleep with a man for a million dollars but refuses for a dollar (“what kind of woman do you take me for?”), the punchline being that it’s no longer a question of principles but of price.
I guess the point here is that as soon as some amount of subsidies is acceptable, it’s no longer a showdown between unbridled capitalism and a command economy. The question really just becomes one of degree.
Climate change itself is an unintended consequence of pricing the well-being of the commons at zero.
There is a fair discussion regarding regulated vs free market to be had, but people at least need to understand market failures first (externalities being one of them).
Of course there is. The subsidy would be on watts output, not on number if panels. Therefore any way to make the panels cheaper to produce and/or more efficient brings more revenue and more profit margin.
