Zaremba, H. (2020, March 5). China Could Start A New Solar Price War. Retrieved March 8, 2020, from https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Solar-Energy/China-Could-Start-A-New-Solar-Price-War.html
With investments in clean energy booming, China still sits at the center of it all and leads the global solar supply chain. Knowing this, though, China intends to add forty gigawatts to their yearly capacity– a jump large enough to start a price war. This will most likely cause an overproduction of solar panels, which could potentially encourage the rest of the globe to follow suit in a shift to renewable energy.
This article relates to environmental science because it shows a side of the story to overcoming climate change that many are already worried about. By exposing how solar energy could bring slight downfall, yet overpowering that concern with data describing its potential benefit, people are more persuaded to change their impact and switch to solar as well. Large industries like China being actively involved encourages many others to follow.
While I think the idea of China adopting more renewable energy would be awesome, I don’t totally picture them changing to something like solar anytime soon. China, one of the largest consumers of coal on the planet, seems to not really have any concerns for the health of the environment as of now. If solar panels were to shown to help reduce costs, or something of similar gain for Chinese companies, then I could see this being a possibility.
Thanks for your comment! I agree entirely. If solar could be made cheap enough that it was more financially detrimental for companies to use coal rather than solar, I think China eventually could make the switch along with many other countries.