Sanctioning Russia, European Union Prematurely Suffocated Its Own Industry without Cheap Energy While China Came to Dominate the World in Solar Energy Irreversibly

 

"Beijing is set to further increase its manufacturing and installation of solar panels as it seeks to master global markets and wean itself from imports.

China unleashed the full might of its solar energy industry last year. It installed more solar panels than the United States has in its history. It cut the wholesale price of panels it sells by nearly half. And its exports of fully assembled solar panels climbed 38 percent while its exports of key components almost doubled.

Get ready for an even bigger display of China’s solar energy dominance.

While the United States and Europe are trying to revive renewable energy production and help companies fend off bankruptcy, China is racing far ahead.

At the annual session of China’s legislature this week, Premier Li Qiang, the country’s second-highest official after Xi Jinping, announced that the country would accelerate the construction of solar panel farms as well as wind and hydroelectric projects.

With China’s economy stumbling, the ramped-up spending on renewable energy, mainly solar, is a cornerstone of a big bet on emerging technologies. China’s leaders say that a “new trio” of industries — solar panels, electric cars and lithium batteries — has replaced an “old trio” of clothing, furniture and appliances.

The goal is to help offset a steep slump in China’s housing construction sector. China hopes to harness emerging industries like solar power, which Mr. Xi likes to describe as “new productive forces,” to re-energize an economy that has slowed for more than a decade.

The emphasis on solar power is the latest installment in a two-decade program to make China less dependent on energy imports.

China’s solar exports have already drawn urgent responses. In the United States, the Biden administration has introduced subsidies that cover much of the cost of making solar panels and part of the much higher cost of installing them.

The alarm in Europe is particularly great. Officials are bitter that a dozen years ago, China subsidized its factories to make solar panels while European governments offered subsidies to buy panels made anywhere. That led to an explosion of consumer purchases from China that hurt Europe’s solar industry.

A wave of bankruptcies swept the European industry, leaving the continent largely dependent on Chinese products.

“We have not forgotten how China’s unfair trade practices affected our solar industry — many young businesses were pushed out by heavily subsidized Chinese competitors,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said in her State of the Union address last September.

The remnants of Europe’s solar industry are now fading away. Norwegian Crystals, an important European producer of raw materials for solar panels, filed for bankruptcy last summer. Meyer Burger, a Swiss company, announced on Feb. 23 that it would halt production in the first half of March at its factory in Freiburg, Germany, and would try to raise money to complete factories in Colorado and Arizona.

The company’s U.S. projects could tap renewable energy manufacturing subsidies provided by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

China’s cost advantage is formidable. A research unit of the European Commission calculated in a report in January that Chinese companies could make solar panels for 16 to 18.9 cents per watt of generating capacity. By contrast, it cost European companies 24.3 to 30 cents per watt, and American companies about 28 cents.

The difference partly reflects lower wages in China. Chinese cities have also provided land for solar panel factories at a fraction of market prices. State-owned banks have lent heavily at low interest rates even though solar companies have lost money and some went bankrupt. And Chinese companies have figured out how to build and equip factories inexpensively.

Low electricity prices in China make a big difference.

Manufacturing the main raw material for solar panels, polysilicon, requires huge amounts of energy. Solar panels typically must generate electricity for at least seven months to recoup the electricity that was needed to make them.

Coal provides two-thirds of China’s electricity at low cost. But Chinese companies are reducing costs further by installing solar farms in the deserts of western China, where public land is essentially free. Companies then use the electricity from those farms to make more polysilicon.

By contrast, Europe has costly electricity, particularly after it stopped buying natural gas from Russia during the Ukraine war. Land used in Europe for solar farms is expensive. In the Southwestern United States, environmental concerns have slowed the installation of solar farms, while zoning issues have blocked permits for the transmission of renewable energy.

China’s coal consumption has made it the world’s largest annual contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. But the country’s pioneering role in making solar panels less expensive has slowed the increase in emissions.

“If the Chinese manufacturers had not brought down the cost of panels by more than 95 percent, we could not see so many installations across the world,” said Kevin Tu, a Beijing energy expert and nonresident fellow with the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.

Annual solar panel installations have nearly quadrupled worldwide since 2018.

Some of the new solar farms generating electricity for polysilicon production are in two provinces in southwestern China, Qinghai and Yunnan. But much of the polysilicon is made in the Xinjiang region of northwestern China. The United States bans imports made with materials or components manufactured by forced labor in Xinjiang, where China has repressed predominantly Muslim minorities like the Uyghurs.

That has led the United States to block some shipments of solar panels from China, while the European Union has been considering similar action.

Chinese companies increasingly do the initial, high-value stages of solar panel manufacturing in China, and then ship the components to overseas factories for final assembly. This allows the shipments to avoid trade barriers, like tariffs imposed on many Chinese imports by President Donald J. Trump. Several of China’s biggest solar panel manufacturers are building final assembly plants in the United States to tap subsidies offered as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.

The law includes extensive subsidies to revive the American solar panel industry, which almost completely collapsed a decade ago in the face of low-cost imports from China. But building an industry that can stand on its own will be difficult.

China produces practically all of the world’s equipment for making solar panels, and almost all of the supply of every component of solar panels, from wafers to special glass.

“There is know-how to it, and it’s all in China,” said Ocean Yuan, the chief executive of Grape Solar, a company in Eugene, Ore., that works with Chinese solar companies that are setting up assembly operations in the United States.

That know-how used to be in the United States. As recently as 2010, Chinese producers of solar panels relied mainly on imported equipment, and faced long and costly delays if anything broke down.

“It took days or weeks to get replacement parts and engineers,” said Frank Haugwitz, a longtime solar energy consultant specializing in the Chinese industry.

In 2010, Applied Materials, a Silicon Valley company, built two extensive labs in Xi’an, the city in western China famous for terra-cotta warriors. Each lab was the size of two football fields. They were intended to do final testing for assembly lines with robots that could churn out solar panels with practically no human labor.

But within several years, Chinese companies had figured out how to do it themselves. Applied Materials considerably cut back its production of solar panel tooling and focused on making similar equipment that makes semiconductors.

Today anyone who tries to make solar panels outside China faces potential delays in installing or fixing equipment.

While Europe is mulling whether to follow the United States’ example with its own subsidies and import restrictions on solar products, Mr. Haugwitz said, “It will remain a challenge for Europeans to compete.”" [1]

1. How China Came to Dominate the World in Solar Energy. Bradsher, Keith.  New York Times (Online)New York Times Company. Mar 7, 2024.

Realybės patikrinimai prastai dirbantiems yra karališka viršininkų kančia --- Vadovams tenka sunkus darbas, pateikiant atsiliepimus darbuotojams, kurie mano, kad jų darbas yra geresnis, nei realiai yra

  „Jie mano, kad jų pačios banaliausios idėjos yra puikios, nepaiso ženklų, kad jiems sunku, ir pataisymus traktuoja, kaip pasiūlymus.

 

     Jie tiki, kad jie yra Dievo dovanos, bet iš tikrųjų yra darbuotojai iš pragaro, ir jei buvote bet kurio lygio vadovas, tikriausiai, tokį turėjote. Tiesą sakant, tikimybė, kad valdysite, kliedesių turintį, darbuotoją, gali būti didesnė, nei bet kada.

 

     Daugelis įmonių pandemijos metu atsisakė apžvalgų arba jų nesureikšmino, todėl kai kurie darbuotojai nežinojo, kur jie stovi, arba užliūliavo kitus klaidingai suvokdami, kad jie puikūs. Desperatiškai siekdamos išlaikyti darbuotojus, įmonės toleravo vidutinybę arba gyrė žmones tiesiog už tai, kad jie pasirodė.

 

     Dabar įmonės negailestingai orientuojasi į efektyvumą, o tai reiškia, kad vadovai yra įpareigoti atkurti sudėtingesnius formalius vertinimus. Sėkmės išgyvenant tuo metu, kai kai kuriuos gali sujaudinti pats žodis „atsiliepimai“. Beveik keturi iš 10 darbuotojų, praėjusiais metais gavusių žemiausius įvertinimus iš vadovų, įvertino save, kaip labai vertinamus organizacijos, rodo „BambooHR“ duomenys, išanalizavę beveik du milijonus „The Wall Street Journal“ įvertinimų.

 

     Realybės patikrinimas, pernelyg pasitikinčiam, prastai darbą atliekančiam, žaidėjui yra viena sunkiausių užduočių, su kuria susiduria viršininkai, nes nėra garantijos, kad kritika suveiks.

 

     „Turėjau kaiką, kas man tiesiai šviesiai pasakė: „Girdėjau jūsų atsiliepimus, bet su jais nesutikau“, – sako Sara Censoprano, rinkodaros programinės įrangos įmonės „Movable Ink“ klientų patirties direktorė.

 

     Ji nusprendė darbuotojamss aiškiau pasakyti, kas yra rekomendacija, o kas įsakymas. Ji taip pat klausia naujų jos komandos narių, kaip jie nori išgirsti konstruktyvią kritiką. Vadovai, kurie bijo neišvengiamos konfrontacijos su nesupratusiais žmonėmis, turėtų iš anksto paklausti, ar darbuotojai teikia pirmenybę blogoms naujienoms akis į akį, ar elektroniniu paštu, kad galėtų tai suprasti prieš pokalbį, sako Censoprano. Kaip viršininkui, tai kelias į apsidraudimą prieš būsimus skundus dėl jūsų vadovavimo. Nesugebėkite skelbti griežtos tiesos ir jūs arba jūsų įmonė gali sulaukti vienos žvaigždutės įvertinimo.

 

     Buvusi „Cloudflare“ darbuotoja neseniai išgarsėjo už tai, kad nufilmavo jos atleidimą, ir sakė, kad negavo jokių požymių, kad netiko. „Cloudflare“ generalinis direktorius Matthew Prince'as pavadino vaizdo įrašą skausmingu žiūrėti, ir sakė, kad vadovai turėjo aiškiai perteikti lūkesčius ir tai, ar jie buvo patenkinti: „Nė vienas darbuotojas niekada neturėtų stebėtis, kad jo metodai nedirba“.

 

     „Dirbau su žmonėmis, kurie tikrai tikėjo, kad jie daro gerą darbą ir visiškai nepadaro“, – sako Jill Snider, vadovaujanti didelės pramogų įmonės turinio įsigijimo komandai. „Turėjau su jais susėsti ir pasakyti: „Tai yra realybė, ir mums reikia, kad tu pasiektum šiuos etapus, kitaip tu neturėsi ateities su šia kompanija. “

 

     Atrankinė klausa gali būti priežastis, sako ji. Žmonės prisiriša prie nedidelių komplimentų, gautų už paprastų pareigų atlikimą, ir užkerta kelią kritiniams atsiliepimams apie didesnes užduotis – tik nustebę, kai jiems pranešama, kad jiems sekasi prastai. Kitais atvejais darbuotojai įveikė mažas kliūtis, nesuvokdami, kad tikroji sėkmės kartelė yra daug aukštesnė.

 

     Timas Newhardas manė, kad jis buvo kantrus ir malonus prastam jo komandos žaidėjui. Prieš kelerius metus, dirbdamas ankstesniame darbe, vienas iš jo pavaldinių buvo ne tai, o priminė apie save kitais būdais. Taigi Newhardas vengė sunkių pokalbių, tikėdamasis, kad situacija išsispręs savaime. Tada atėjo metinės apžvalgos sezonas, jo sąžiningas įvertinimas ir bjaurus bendravimas.

 

     „Tai buvo traumuojanti“, – sako jis. „Šis žmogus sureagavo labai neprofesionaliai, ir tai mums tapo nuolatine problema. Santykiai taip ir neatsistatė. Newhardas galiausiai perėjo į kitą įmonę.

 

     Dabar jis yra civilinės inžinerijos ir tranzito konsultacinės įmonės „RailPros“ viceprezidentas. Jis siekia išvengti nemalonių netikėtumų ir kas savaitę arba kas dvi savaites teikia atvirus atsiliepimus realiuoju laiku. Įveikę kritikos šoką, kai kurie darbuotojai vertina galimybę tobulėti, kol neigiami vertinimai nepatenka į jų personalo bylas, sako jis.

 

     Ericas Mariasis, programinės įrangos inžinierius, sako, kad norėtų, kad vadovai būtų buvę tiesesni, kai jam sunkiai sekėsi prisitaikyti prie naujos ankstesnio darbdavio komandos. Grupė dirbo kitaip nei kitos, kuriose jis dirbo toje pačioje įmonėje, ir jis jautė, kad jo gamybos tempai atsilieka nuo kai kurių bendraamžių. Tačiau prižiūrėtojai nuolat skatino, sako jis, todėl manė, kad jam turėjo sektis gerai.

 

     Iki tol, kol jis buvo pakviestas į ekspromtą susitikimą ir jam pasakė, kad nedirba dėl tos priežasties, kurią įtarė – lėto darbo. Jis pasinaudojo užuomina ir perėjo įmonės viduje.

 

     Jo patarimas nepatenkintiems vadovams visur: „Būkite tokie pat sąžiningi, kaip tik jūs  galite būti sąmoningai nesugadinę [kieno nors] jausmų.

 

     Gimnastika yra sudėtinga sporto šaka, tačiau kiekvienas manevras turi sutartą taškų vertę. Darbuotojų įvertinimai turėtų veikti taip pat, sako Davidas Fallarme'as, Owner.com, internetinių restoranų užsakymų sistemų gamintojos, rinkodaros viceprezidentas.

 

     „Nuo kažkieno įsitraukimo turėtumėte turėti pagrindą, kaip atrodo aukso medalis, kaip atrodo sidabro medalis, kaip atrodo bronzos medalis“, – sako jis.

 

     Rubrikos formulavimas viršininkams sunaudoja daug psichinės energijos ir gali atrodyti nereikalingas įdarbinimo metu, kai vadovai paprastai optimistiškai žiūri į naujus kadrus. Tačiau viršininkai jau pirmąją dieną turėtų pasiruošti nusivylimo galimybei, priduria Fallarme. Iš pat pradžių nustatę aiškius tikslus lengviau vėliau žmonėms pasakyti, kad jiems nepavyko susitvarkyti.

 

     Kai kuriais atvejais neužtenka jokios priežiūros ir pasiruošimo, sako Andrea Taylor, kuri daugiau, nei du dešimtmečius, dirbo aukštojo mokslo srityje ir dabar konsultuoja ne pelno organizacijais dėl lėšų rinkimo. Jos darbo kryptis yra gana aiški, pažymi ji. Surenkate pinigus arba ne. Vėlgi, visi užklumpa sausumą, o lėšų rinkėjams, kurie ateina tušti, gali būti sunku pasakyti, ar jie turėtų toliau stengtis, ar pabusti, kad jie nėra labai geri.

 

     „Aš turėjau žmonių, kurie visiškai neigia, iki tol, kol turėjau juos paleisti“, - sako ji. „Tais atvejais aš pokalbį perkeliu į: ar tai tikrai tai, ką tu nori daryti?"

 

     Galbūt, tam tikri apmąstymai užkirs kelią tokiam pačiam likimui kitame darbe, mano ji.“ [1]

 

1.  On the Clock: Reality Checks Are a Royal Pain For Bosses of Underperformers --- Managers have a tough job giving feedback to employees who think their work is better than it is. Borchers, Callum.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 07 Mar 2024: A.10.  

Reality Checks Are a Royal Pain For Bosses of Underperformers --- Managers have a tough job giving feedback to employees who think their work is better than it is

"They think their most banal ideas are brilliant, ignore signs that they're struggling and treat corrections like suggestions.

They believe they're God's gifts but are actually employees from hell, and if you've been a manager at any level then you've probably had one. In fact, the odds that you're managing a delusional worker may be higher than ever.

Lots of companies scrapped or de-emphasized reviews during the pandemic, leaving some employees unsure where they stood, or lulling others into a false sense that they're crushing it. Desperate to retain employees, businesses tolerated mediocrity or praised people simply for showing up.

Now companies are ruthlessly focused on efficiency, and that means managers are charged with reinstituting more biting formal evaluations. Good luck getting through at a time when the very word "feedback" can be triggering for some. Nearly four in 10 employees who received the lowest grades from managers last year had rated themselves as highly valued by the organization, according to data from BambooHR, which analyzed almost two million assessments for The Wall Street Journal.

Delivering a reality check to an overconfident underperformer is one of the toughest tasks bosses face, because there is no guarantee critiques will click.

"I had somebody who outright told me, 'I heard your feedback, but I disagreed with it,'" says Sara Censoprano, associate director of client experience at Movable Ink, a marketing software company.

She's decided to be more explicit with staff about what's a recommendation and what's an order. She also asks new members of her team how they want to hear constructive criticism. Managers who dread the inevitable confrontations with clueless people would be wise to ask, up front, whether employees prefer bad news face-to-face, or in an email, so they can digest it ahead of a conversation, Censoprano says. As a boss, it's a way to C.Y.A. against future complaints about your leadership. Botch the delivery of hard truth, and you or your company could be in for a one-star review of your own.

An ex-Cloudflare employee recently went viral for filming her firing and said she'd received no indication that she wasn't measuring up. Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince called the video painful to watch and said managers should have clearly communicated expectations and whether they were being met: "No employee should ever actually be surprised they weren't performing."

"I have worked with people who truly believed that they were doing a good job and were not delivering at all," says Jill Snider, who leads a content-acquisition team at a large entertainment company. "I've had to sit them down and be like, 'This is reality, and we need you to meet these milestones or you're not going to have a future with this company.' "

Selective hearing can be a reason, she says. People cling to small compliments received for fulfilling basic duties and block out critical feedback on bigger tasks -- only to react with surprise when told they're doing poorly. Other times, employees have been clearing low hurdles without realizing the true bar for success is much higher.

Tim Newhard thought he was being patient and kind with a low-performer on his team. Several years ago, in a previous job, one of his reports wasn't cutting it but reminded him of himself in other ways. So Newhard avoided tough conversations, hoping the situation would fix itself. Then came annual-review season, his honest assessment, and an ugly interaction.

"It was traumatic," he says. "This person reacted in a very unprofessional way, and it became an ongoing issue for us." The relationship never recovered. Newhard eventually moved on to another company.

Now a vice president at RailPros, a civil-engineering and transit-consulting firm, he aims to prevent unpleasant surprises and gives candid, real-time feedback in weekly or biweekly one-on-ones. Once they get over the shock of critiques, some employees appreciate the chance to improve before negative appraisals go into their personnel files, he says.

Eric Mariasis, a software engineer, says he wishes managers had been more direct when he was struggling to adjust to a new team at a previous employer. The group worked differently from others he'd been in at the same company, and he sensed that his pace of production lagged behind some peers. Yet supervisors were consistently encouraging, he says, so he figured he must have been doing fine.

Until he was called into an impromptu meeting and told that he wasn't working out for the very reason he suspected -- slow output. He took the hint and transferred internally before he could be reassigned involuntarily or cut.

His advice to unsatisfied managers everywhere: "Just be as honest as you can be without purposely devastating [someone's] feelings."

Gymnastics is a complicated sport, but every maneuver has an agreed-upon point value. Employee ratings should work the same way, says David Fallarme, vice president of marketing at Owner.com, a maker of online ordering systems for restaurants.

"From somebody's onboarding, you should have a framework of what a gold medal looks like, what a silver medal looks like, what a bronze medal looks like," he says.

Formulating a rubric consumes a lot of mental energy for bosses and can seem unnecessary at the time of hiring, when managers are generally optimistic about their new additions. But bosses ought to prepare on day one for the possibility of disappointment, Fallarme adds. Setting clear targets from the get-go makes it easier to tell people later that they failed to stick their landings.

In some cases, no amount of care and preparation is enough, says Andrea Taylor, who worked in higher-education development for more than two decades and now consults with nonprofits on fundraising efforts. Her line of work is pretty clear-cut, she notes. You raise money or you don't. Then again, everyone hits dry spells, and it can be hard for fundraisers who are coming up empty to tell whether they should keep trying or wake up to the reality that they're not very good.

"I've had people in complete denial, right up to the point of having to let them go," she says. "In those cases, I kind of shift the conversation into: Is this really what you want to do?"

Maybe some reflection will prevent the same fate in the next job, she figures." [1]

1.  On the Clock: Reality Checks Are a Royal Pain For Bosses of Underperformers --- Managers have a tough job giving feedback to employees who think their work is better than it is. Borchers, Callum.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 07 Mar 2024: A.10.  

 

French President Macron's speech about Ukraine

Many people with a bird's brain in Lithuania attach great importance to French President Macron's statement that he does not rule out the possibility of sending NATO troops to Ukraine, and starting a nuclear war. The same Macron who recently said that NATO is brain dead.

 

Both of Macron's speeches are hallucinations. Relying on them when creating Lithuanian policy would also be a hallucination. Only Lithuania is so small that these hallucinations can easily end in the death of the hallucinating brain.