BLOOMBERG • June 11, 2024
The speed of the energy transition in recent years can easily make people underestimate the scale of the challenge that lies ahead. That could be a fatal mistake. We are still not building enough solar and wind farms, nor enough factories for the components they’ll use, to make the switch work. Yet President Joe Biden’s justification for doubling tariffs on imported solar to 50% is that, to the contrary, the world has too many production lines for green tech. He’s going to need all of those production lines if he’s to meet his target of decarbonizing America’s electricity grid by 2035. It’s worse still with wind. The turbines we need simply won’t get built. Reducing the cost of green power is the single best thing the world can do if we’re to escape catastrophic warming in our lifetimes. Chinese clean technology isn’t “artificially cheap.” It’s just cheap. ~ David Fickling