The permafrost gun is predicted to fire ~2050. No turning back.

[kristopher]

44. Renewables are faster, safer and cheaper

22 months ago:

Will China’s 50 GW goal create a solar bubble? No.
In fact, the dramatic scaling of solar manufacturing capacity is just what’s needed to keeps costs dropping

By Stephen Lacey on May 12, 2011

The renewable energy industry is central to addressing many national problems: Climate change, national security, and job growth. Its biggest international challenge is the Green Giant – the competition from China’s full-court press into clean energy.

Seemingly every week there’s another story about how China is upping the U.S. in the race to develop clean energy. This week’s news is in the solar sector, where Chinese officials say they plan to deploy 50 GW of cumulative capacity in the country by 2020. China only has about 1 GW of solar PV installed today (and no concentrated solar thermal power). But assuming it can meet those targets and continue scaling manufacturing (the country currently holds 57% of global solar cell manufacturing in the world), China is poised to become a vertically-integrated solar leader – not just an exporter of technology.

This story on the Forbes blog seems to have misunderstood the implications of China’s strategy:

“The epic expansion planned for the latter part of this decade may create the world’s first solar-energy bubble. The existing solar supply chain is likely too shallow to sustain growth on this scale. Unless the industry develops scalable infrastructure over the next four years, China’s planned installation of 8 GWs of solar capacity annually between 2015 and 2020 is likely to create severe bottlenecks in the solar supply chain. These bottlenecks could radically inflate the price of basic materials like silicon and create labor shortages that would affect the costs of manufacturing solar modules, designing and installing new solar systems and operating and maintaining already installed systems.”

So are we really going to see a solar energy bubble? That’s extremely unlikely, says Shayle Kann, a leading solar analyst with GTM Research.

“It’s actually nothing crazy,” he says. “I have a hard time seeing this creating a global undersupply – we’ll have 50 GW of module manufacturing capacity by the end of this year. The goal is doable.”

That’s a pretty amazing feat....
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/05/12/208083/will-china-create-a-solar-bubble-not-going-to-happen/

And from the beginning of Feb:

China increases solar target by 67% – yet again

For the fourth time in two years China has increased its solar energy target (- from) 21GW by 2015 to 35GW.

Chinese newspaper The Economic Times reported Shi Lishan, Deputy Director of the Renewable Energy Office of the National Energy Administration (NEA), said, “The target of 35 GW has been confirmed, and will soon be announced.

“The reason for making the adjustment is that the PV industry has been developing very quickly.”

In the last ten years, China’s solar PV cumulative installed capacity has already grown by 67 times the average annual growth...
http://www.pv-tech.org/news/china_increases_solar_target_by_67_yet_again