Why supply chain bottlenecks could be a threat to Biden's climate efforts

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Yahoo Finance

Why supply chain bottlenecks could be a threat to Biden’s climate efforts

Ben Werschkul · Senior Producer and Writer
Tue, October 5, 2021, 7:47 AM

President Biden's lofty climate goals – for a carbon pollution-free U.S. electricity grid by 2035, and a net-zero emissions economy by 2050 – require pretty much everything to go right.

What may be an unappreciated challenge to getting there are supply chain impediments, according to a new report from the Center for American Progress.

The concern is that manufacturing for solar panels, wind turbines, utility-scale batteries, and other products to generate clean energy will remain centered in places like China.

If the U.S. is “not able to secure a favored, or at least competitive, place in those supply chains, their commercial outlook will be substantially impaired,” the report notes. It “is not inconceivable that the renewable industry could follow the path of semiconductors and consumer electronics, in which engineering and design occurs in the United States, but most production occurs overseas with foreign components.”

Mike Williams, one of the report’s authors, said America “used to have a significant portion” of the semiconductor supply chain before places like Taiwan and South Korea took over, “mainly because they directly invested in it”.

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[I_UndergroundPanther]

1. Howabout these things

For green energy get made here? It would create tons of jobs.
The switch to green energy would be much easier..use up some of the empty abandoned business buildings.


Wait.....that makes too much sense.

[NNadir]

2. The authors and everyone else are blindly and absurdly assuming...

...that manufacturing so called "green" energy facilities is "green." The article specifically mentions steel.

Steel is made using coal, with the slag dumped indiscriminately. One should visit an abandoned US steel plant to understand this. I've done this frequently, musing about what's leaching out of that slag every time it rains.

Wind turbines last less than 20 years before they become landfill.

Manufacturing so called "green" infrastructure is generally dependent for its economics on weak environmental policies, which should tell people something but never seems to do so.

Anyone here want a new steel plant in their backyard?

[Finishline42]

3. Please keep up

3 innovations in green steel

https://www.greenbiz.com/article/3-innovations-green-steel

Windmills get replaced before they wear out because of a simple principle - doubling the diameter of the blades increases output three to four times.

And of course you don't have torture the earth to mine for the fuel either.

I've been saying for a long time that the dynamic will change if nat gas price goes up. It went down under $3 and today I saw it above $6 and it's not even winter yet. It's what happens to fuel for as long as I can remember. Expansion of use during times of low prices (Dec 2015 gas was $1.50/gal, lots of people buying SUV's and Pickup trucks now they are spend twice as much to fill up that tank). What does the increase in nat gas do to the cost of making electricity? New solar and wind are already cheaper that the operating costs of coal and nuclear in many parts of the country - the spike in nat gas prices will only make it more so.