Put not your faith in Government promises: the solar panels fiasco
FOR governments will lie to you and lie to you again and again.
As the companies that make solar panels are finding out.
Only four years ago, hundreds of start-ups optimistically built factories and churned out solar panels to meet rising demand. Now, closures and failure loom for many.
The brutal shakeout is a dramatic reversal for an industry that has seen overall global growth of more than 30 percent annually over the past decade and this year will reach new records for solar panel sales.
Only a handful of manufacturers are now profitable in the face of too much capacity, which has contributed to a plunge in prices, and as government subsidies have been curbed. European banks that lent billions for solar installation have also pulled back as they struggle in the euro zone credit crisis, and debt-laden Chinese solar companies are in danger of burning up.
The problem is, quite simply, that the various governments offered subsidies for solar which were just too large. Four times the price of regular electricity in many places and cases. So of course, everyone and their grandmother geared up to make the things. At which point the governments realised what they had done and pulled the plug. As our own dear leaders in the UK have done in halving the feed in tariffs.
So, all those people who invested their money on the back of those governmentpromises, those who built factories, worked on the engineering, to stop Gaia from boiling.
Well, they’re fucked, aren’t they, as they all go bust.
And they’re stuffed because they believed government promises, a very silly thing to do indeed.
Posted: 5th, March 2013 | In: Money Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
