China Exports Threaten Green Firm

"PARIS -- French solar-panel company Photowatt once powered Europe's ambition to become a renewables manufacturing giant, one that would provide the technology to help achieve the continent's far-reaching climate goals.

Today, Photowatt is instead hanging by a thread, a potent symbol of the West's struggles to fend off fierce competition from China.

A wave of cheap Chinese exports threatens millions of jobs and is stirring fresh friction between Beijing and leaders in the U.S. and Europe. Photowatt's fate, and the decimation of Europe's solar-panel industry, is a warning to the U.S., which is now considering how to protect American industries from renewed pressure from China.

Photowatt's orders have plunged, its customers lured away by solar panels imported from China at rock-bottom prices. Cash infusions from the French government keep it alive. Even Photowatt's state-controlled owner, power company EDF, has largely stopped buying its panels in favor of those made by Chinese companies.

"There are fewer and fewer of us. We lose skills, workshops close -- it's hopeless even," said Emilie Brechbuhl, an engineer and union delegate at Photowatt. "We aren't competitors of the Chinese. We are nonexistent."

Beijing is seeking to stimulate a flagging economy by channeling investment into its vast manufacturing sector. That threatens a repeat of the so-called China shock two decades ago when Chinese exports flooded global markets and destroyed many Western competitors.

In particular, fears are surging across the West that China will crush its green industries, forcing the U.S. and Europe to rely on a geopolitical rival in China for the goods that are expected to power the low-carbon economy of the future.

Photowatt makes silicon wafers that are then assembled into solar cells and panels, one of the few companies outside China in that part of the supply chain. Photowatt invested in a wafer technology that was supposed to allow it to compete against the Chinese. 

The production process was less energy-intensive than the Chinese technology -- and thus more environmentally friendly -- but the wafers were less efficient.

The bet didn't work out: Developers want panels with the maximum output at the lowest cost.

As Photowatt continued to incur annual losses of tens of millions of euros, EDF slashed purchases of its panels and sought to shut the company. But the government of President Emmanuel Macron nixed that idea.

"EDF wanted to close Photowatt," Jean Castex said in 2021 when he was the French prime minister. "We stopped them!"

These days, EDF says it doesn't want to make solar panels and is trying to find an "industrial partner" for Photowatt. Macron's government this month announced financial incentives for solar-panel production in France. Two large factories are in the works but neither has broken ground yet.

"We have managed to free ourselves from dependence on Russian gas and oil. Do we want to move to a dependence on Chinese photovoltaic panels?" said French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire. "We must therefore produce solar panels on our territory."" [1]

If you are producing life on the Earth saving stuff in some too expensive for the market way, just go to the cemetery and meet your well deserved death. You are the problem in our attempts to save humanity and the Earth on time. Take the politicians that support you together with you to the cemetery. You all are the scum of the world, and the idiots to boot.

1. China Exports Threaten Green Firm. Dalton, Matthew.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 23 Apr 2024: B.2.