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Deglobalizing the Solar Industry Would Cost the World At Least $15B by 2030
David Shultz
David Shultz reports on clean technology and electric vehicles, among other industries, for dot.LA. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, Nautilus and many other publications.
The United States is in quite the pickle when it comes to the solar industry.
On one hand, the Biden administration wants to reduce emissions and hit the targets outlined in the Paris Agreement by installing as much solar power as cheaply and as quickly as possible. On the other hand, the U.S. wants to be a leader in clean energy tech, foster new industries and create new jobs in the sector. To do so, however, the U.S. has to reduce reliance on foreign powers—especially ones with economic and political practices as questionable as China.
And therein lies the issue: China manufactures 78% of the world’s photovoltaic (PV) cells—the key component in solar panels. Switching that production to U.S. soil will cost money and time—two luxuries in short supply in the race against climate change. A new study, published today in Nature, attempts to quantify just how much money globalization has saved the industry to date, and how much it would cost to shift away from the model.
To get a handle on how much money a globalized PV market has saved the world economy so far, researchers began by creating a model that estimated how much China, Germany and the United States (the three leaders in PV tech) learned and benefited from each other between 2008 and 2020. So far, the team calculates that the United States saved $24 billion compared to if it had gradually begun a 10-year transition to domestic-only PV production starting in 2008. Meanwhile, Germany saved $7 billion and China saved $36 billion, for a combined total of $67 billion.
The researchers then used the same model to project forward to 2030. They evaluated two different scenarios. In the first, the three countries continue to ramp up PV production at a rate consistent with the previous decade, while also gradually transitioning away from the globalized PV market to a fully domestic one. The second scenario assumes an even more aggressive expansion of solar energy tech–one that would actually get us closer to the climate targets laid out in the Paris Agreement–but at the same gradual shift away from globalized supply chains. Both scenarios are compared against leaving the industry as is.
Compared to a fully globalized supply chain, in the first scenario 2030 PV prices would be about 20% higher for all three countries, with energy costs increasing from $262 to $320 per kW in the United States. In the second scenario, in which the solar industry grows even more rapidly, the cost of deglobalization increases by another 5% — from $221 per kW to $276 in the United States.
Between 2020 and 2030, the researchers estimate that deglobalizing the PV market would cost the world economy $15 billion under the conservative estimate and as much as $36 billion if we actually build as much solar as the International Energy Agency says we need. In other words, the more aggressively we build out solar energy, the more deglobalization will sting.
Gang He, an assistant professor of energy policy at Stony Brook University and one of the authors of the study, says it’s up to policy makers to decide if that cost is worth paying.
“If countries all want to harvest the domestic benefits, then it gets harder for countries to work together,” says He. “We don't have a solution for that. We just present evidence-based research to show that if we move in that direction, this is what will happen. And we need to find a way to address that.”
One idea is to try to accomplish the shift with a carrot rather than a stick. In other words, instead of blocking the flow of goods or information with tariffs and or quotas, governments could focus on incentivizing domestic purchasing, He says. Incentives and investing would build the U.S. domestic solar industry without artificially inflating the cost of buying Chinese panels and thus limiting how much renewable energy the country can install per dollar. The problem is the gains from the green energy revolution are often distributed unequally.
“We need to introduce policy to redistribute the welfare,” says He. “Maybe it's through redistribution of the revenue or taxes or other mechanisms. It's very complicated, we understand. But simply blocking the global supply chain may not be the answer. No matter what the geopolitics, we still need to find a way to work together. That's the clear message I hope to deliver.”
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David Shultz
David Shultz reports on clean technology and electric vehicles, among other industries, for dot.LA. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, Nautilus and many other publications.
What Does a TikTok Ban Mean for the Company’s LA Workforce?
05:00 AM | March 22, 2023
Evan Xie
From mass layoffs to the rocky economic climate, tech workers have had a rough few months. TikTok hasn’t been immune to these issues. In July, the company laid off about 100 employees across the globe, and then cut at least 20 advertising employees one month later. In January, TikTok cut a handful of people from its HR department over the team’s “limited practical value” to the company.
But TikTok also faces a problem different from any of its competitors—the US government is assessing whether or not its platform should be banned from the country. Leaving TikTok’s current 32,000 headcount in jeopardy of mass layoffs.
Though the company’s Chinese ownership is at the root of its political dispute, TikTok’s US headquarters are in Culver City. First opened in January 2020 with 400 employees, the location brought employees back to the office twice a week in July 2022. TikTok has not released information about how many employees work out of LA, but its Mountain View office houses roughly 1,000 employees. LinkedIn lists around 1,000 LA-based employees, but that number is slightly muddled by influencers listing TikTok as their employer. Offices in New York City, Austin and Nashville round out its US footprint.
Of course, TikTok could still be bought out by another company. But it's unclear what company would pay TikTok’s fee, which ranges from $40 billion to $100 billion. Experts have noted that major tech companies like Google and Meta already run their own social media platforms, so buying a competitor would open them up to antitrust scrutiny.
Others point to Microsoft and Oracle as potential buyers. But both companies have undergone recent layoffs this year, which brings into question how many TikTok employees would be kept aboard. Microsoft has also funneled $10 billion into OpenAI, which means the company might not be interested in diverting funds to a social media platform. Whoever the new owner is, the company could potentially scrap TikTok’s Culver City office, leaving a gaping hole in LA’s tech scene.
Still, any TikTok employee who survives a potential sale may benefit from a change in ownership. Even before the company was under political fire, TikTok faced scrutiny for cultural differences between its Chinese owner and its US offices. Last year, multiple employees across the country spoke out about being pressured to adhere to China’s “996 policy,” which has employees work 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. Its content moderates have revealed taxing work environments that exposed them to graphic content. And even high-level executives have struggled as TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, maintained decision-making authority.
If Congress does vote to ban TikTok, that could leave thousands of employees across the country in search of new jobs. And it couldn’t come at a more difficult time. Meta, Snapchat and Twitch, among other social media companies, have all had mass layoffs in the past few months. Which means there’s already a pool of unemployed tech workers in search of work, a number of whom have decidedly turned to other fields.
It’s unclear what the long-term timeline of the TikTok ban looks like and when the government’s ultimate decision will hit employees. But LA’s tech scene might need to brace itself for a mass wave of employees seeking a new home. And this time, they won’t have TikTok to document their employment woes.
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Kristin Snyder
Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
https://twitter.com/ksnyder_db
How Women’s Purchasing Power Is Creating a New Wave of Economic Opportunities In Sports
05:00 AM | June 12, 2023
Samson Amore
According to a Forbes report last April, both the viewership and dollars behind women’s sports at a collegiate and professional level are growing.
In 2022, the first 32 games of the NCAA tournament had record attendance levels, breaking records set back in 2004, and largely driven by the new and rapidly growing women’s NCAA tournament. WNBA openers this year saw a 21% spike in attendance, with some teams including the LA Sparks reporting triple-digit ticket sales growth, about 121% over 2022’s total. In 2023, the average size of an LA Sparks crowd swelled to 10,396 people, up from 4,701 people.
Women make up half the population, but “also 50% of the folks that are walking into the stadium at Dodger Stadium, or your NFL fans are just about 50% women,” noted Erin Storck, a panelist and senior analyst at Los Angeles-based Elysian Park Ventures.
Storck added that in heterosexual households, women generally manage most of the family’s money, giving them huge purchasing power, a potential advantage for female-run leagues. “There's an untapped revenue opportunity,” she noted.
In the soccer world, Los Angeles-based women’s soccer team Angel City FC has put in the work to become a household name, not just in LA County but across the nation. At an LA Tech Week panel hosted by Athlete Strategies about investing in sports, Angel City head of strategy and chief of staff Kari Fleischauer said that years before launching the women’s National Women’s Soccer League team, Angel City FC was pounding the pavement letting people know about the excitement ladies soccer can bring. She noted community is key, and that fostering a sense of engagement and safety at the team’s home venue, BMO stadium (formerly Banc of California Stadium), is one reason fans keep coming back.
Adding free metro rides to BMO stadium and private rooms for nursing fans to breastfeed or fans on the spectrum to avoid sensory overload, were just some of the ways ACFC tried to include its community in the concept of its stadium, Fleischauer said. She noted, though, that roughly 46% of Angel City fans are “straight white dudes hanging out with their bros.”
“Particularly [on] the woman's side, I'd like to think we do a better job of making sure that there's spaces for everyone,” Fleischauer told the audience. “One thing we realize is accessibility is a huge thing.”
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Samson Amore
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
https://twitter.com/samsonamore
samsonamore@dot.la
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