The War Between Wall Street And Solar

How Wall Street Once Killed the U.S. Solar Industry… and how it could happen again.

Robinson Meyer, April 17, 2017 (The Atlantic)

“…[The global solar industry] is a $65-billion business, and the United States has been involved in it from the beginning…Yet North American firms produce only about 3 percent of the world’s solar panels. China and Taiwan, meanwhile, make more than 60 percent of them…Labor in East Asia is often cheaper…but that’s not the only factor…[Computer chips and solar panels were commercialized before 1980 but] the United States still leads the computer-chip industry, holding more than half of global market share for 20 years…A new paper in Science Advances argues that [enormous market changes in the 1970s and 1980s labeled ‘financialization’ drove firms to financial assets with fast-rising valuations instead of] creating new wealth for the long term…Solar’s too long-term; it’s in direct competition with fossil fuels; and it’s very capital-intensive. There has to be some kind of corporate restructuring for innovation to occur. There has to be some kind of policy that makes a break with the way it is now…” click here for more

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