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Study download: Progress in Diversifying the Global Solar PV Supply Chain (pdf)

TLDR:

Until the end of this decade, China and Chinese manufacturers will retain some domination over the global solar PV chain. However, the global solar PV supply chain is becoming more robust thanks to the diversification of crystalline silicon modules manufacturing capacity in the United States, Europe, Southeast Asia, and India, according to a report by Japan's Renewable Energy Institute.

In the 2030s, improvements in solar PV recycling and the widespread adoption of new technologies like perovskite cells, which development is led by China (glass substrate) and Japan (film substrate), will provide new opportunities to further diversify the global solar PV supply chain.

This progress will strengthen worldwide energy security and facilitate the much-needed acceleration of the energy transition.

Geographic concentration of the global solar supply chain exposes the supply chain to some drawbacks, the report finds. The potential disruption risks associated with this type of concentration include natural hazards such as earthquakes and fires, and extreme weather events such as drought and flooding. "For instance, in 2020 and 2022, the global production of polysilicon was reduced because of flooding and fire issues at a handful of Chinese plants," the study says.

The report also mentions both the situation in China's Xinjiang region and Uyghur forced labour as well as China's coal intensity as concerns with China's dominance of global solar supply chain as main drivers of diversification. While citing "human rights violations, unfair trade practices, and environmental pollution," the study criticizes that "the lack of transparency [across supply chains within China] has made it increasingly difficult to verify whether supply chains are free from risk of Uyghur forced labor and reduces trust in the solar industry."

Key Findings:

• As of September 2024, 99% of the world’s solar PV modules manufacturing capacity was based on crystalline silicon because this technology is inexpensive, performant, and durable. Approximately three-fourths of the economic value of crystalline silicon modules come from four minerals: silicon, silver, aluminum, and copper, which productions are generally not excessively geographically concentrated.

• Throughout the entire solar PV supply chain (i.e., polysilicon, ingots, wafers, cells, and modules), the shares of China and Chinese manufacturers often largely exceeded 80% and they were sometimes close to 100%. It is undesirable for any supply chain to be so dependent on a single country. This is the reason why diversification efforts are led across the world (e.g., United States, Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia and India).

• The Chinese industry dominates the solar PV supply chain because it has managed to maximize economies of scale and because it is well-organized around vertically integrated companies. Moreover, the Chinese solar PV industry is innovative and effectively supported by its government. Also, it benefits from affordable electricity prices, which is critical as solar PV manufacturing is electricity intensive.

• The Chinese solar PV industry is confronted with harsh criticisms due to human rights violations, unfair trade practices, and environmental pollution due to its reliance on coal power. Furthermore, China’s aggressive export strategy is blamed for solar PV products oversupply resulting in rock-bottom prices and economic losses.

• In the United States, a combination of subsidies (i.e., tax credits) and protectionist measures have been implemented. Many new projects have been announced, they now need to be realized.

• Europe tries to balance its own interests between increasing its manufacturing capacity and taking advantage of cheap Chinese imports. So far, priority has been given to demand over domestic supply as reducing electricity prices and greenhouse gas emissions are deemed more urgent issues.

• Japan puts the emphasis on perovskite cells, a promising technology that is not fully ready for commercial deployment yet. This strategy should, however, not be used as an excuse for not more proactively installing crystalline silicon. Affordable and rapid decarbonization does not need to wait for perovskite to become mainstream.

• Despite catching less attention, Southeast Asia and India significantly contribute to the diversification of the solar PV supply chain. In Southeast Asia, labor costs are low, and energy is subsidized. In India domestic-content requirements and customs duties have been implemented.

• In addition to these efforts, solar PV recycling and new technologies, like perovskite, hold the potential to be alternatives to Chinese crystalline silicon modules in the 2030s. To take off, these solutions need more governmental support.

The European Commission approved the launch of the project on Monday December 16.

With several public (China, US) and private (Oneweb, Starlink and Kuiper) constellation initiatives being developed and put into service to meet data processing and connectivity needs, the telecommunications sector is more strategic than ever for France and Europe. The IRIS2 programme is designed to meet this challenge.

[...]

The European Union’s secure connectivity satellite constellation programme was decided on in March 2023. IRIS2 (Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite) will be the first multi-orbital satellite network in Europe. Some 300 satellites will be designed, manufactured and deployed in the first phase.

[...]

The programme will provide a wide variety of services to European governments and citizens. The system enables surveillance of borders and remote areas. The programme is indispensable for civil protection, particularly in the event of crises or natural disasters. It improves the delivery of humanitarian aid and the management of maritime emergencies, whether for search or rescue. Numerous smart connected networks – energy, finance, healthcare, data centres, etc. – will be monitored thanks to the connectivity provided by IRIS2. The system will also enable the management of various infrastructures: air, rail, road and vehicle traffic. Added to this are institutional telecoms services for embassies, for example, and new telemedicine services for intervention in isolated areas. Finally, IRIS2 will improve connectivity in areas of strategic interest for foreign security and defence policy: Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Arctic, the Atlantic and Baltic regions, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.

Central Operative Unit - a specialised division of Spain's Guardia Civil that prosecutes the most serious forms of organised crime - worked alongside women's organisations and human rights lawyers for months to legalise Victoria's situation in Spain so that they could bring her family over to join her.

The team follows a victim-focused approach, through which women are offered long-term support to help them settle into a stable and safe environment after they have been rescued.

The team says it sometimes get teased by other units for sounding more like a "charity" than an elite team of criminal investigators, but Cristina is a passionate advocate for what they do.

"We believe in a social and humanitarian process that can restore hope in victims' lives, so they can truly recover and live passionately again."

[...]

[A UN] report finds that women and girls continue to account for the majority of victims detected worldwide, who are mostly trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation.

Spain is both a country of exploitation and a transit hub for thousands of victims trafficked into Europe.

[...]

Brain structure can tell us a lot about reading skills. Importantly, though, the brain is malleable — it changes when we learn a new skill or practice an already acquired one.

For instance, young adults who studied language intensively increased their cortical thickness in language areas. Similarly, reading is likely to shape the structure of the left Heschl’s gyrus and temporal pole. So, if you want to keep your Heschl’s thick and thriving, pick up a good book and start reading.

[...] it’s worth considering what might happen to us as a species if skills like reading become less prioritised. Our capacity to interpret the world around us and understand the minds of others would surely diminish. In other words, that cosy moment with a book in your armchair isn’t just personal – it’s a service to humanity.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17479535

Archived

China is urging colleges and universities to provide "love education" to emphasise positive views on marriage, love, fertility and family, in a bid to boost the country's flagging birth rate.

Beijing has been promoting various measures to try to make having children more attractive to young couples after China posted a second consecutive year of population decline in 2023.

China has the second-biggest population in the world at 1.4 billion, but it is ageing quickly, which will increase the demands on government spending in the future and put pressure on the economy.

College students will be the biggest driver of fertility but they have significantly changed their views on marriage and love, the Jiangsu Xinhua newspaper group said, citing China Population News, an official publication.

[...]

The measures would help create a "healthy and positive marriage and childbearing cultural atmosphere."

[...]

The state council, or cabinet, rallied local governments in November to direct resources towards fixing China's population decline and spread respect for childbearing and marriages "at the right age," although demographers said the moves were unlikely to resonate with young Chinese.

Around 57% of college students polled by China Population News said they did not want to fall in love, mainly because they did not know how to allocate time to balance the relationship between study and love, the publication said.

[...]

Universities could focus on teaching junior college students about population and national conditions, new marriage and childbearing concepts, it said.

Senior college students and graduate students could be taught through "case analysis, group discussion on maintaining intimate relationships and communication between the sexes."

The courses would be able to help them "improve their ability to correctly understand marriage and love and manage love relationships."

Archived

China is urging colleges and universities to provide "love education" to emphasise positive views on marriage, love, fertility and family, in a bid to boost the country's flagging birth rate.

Beijing has been promoting various measures to try to make having children more attractive to young couples after China posted a second consecutive year of population decline in 2023.

China has the second-biggest population in the world at 1.4 billion, but it is ageing quickly, which will increase the demands on government spending in the future and put pressure on the economy.

College students will be the biggest driver of fertility but they have significantly changed their views on marriage and love, the Jiangsu Xinhua newspaper group said, citing China Population News, an official publication.

[...]

The measures would help create a "healthy and positive marriage and childbearing cultural atmosphere."

[...]

The state council, or cabinet, rallied local governments in November to direct resources towards fixing China's population decline and spread respect for childbearing and marriages "at the right age," although demographers said the moves were unlikely to resonate with young Chinese.

Around 57% of college students polled by China Population News said they did not want to fall in love, mainly because they did not know how to allocate time to balance the relationship between study and love, the publication said.

[...]

Universities could focus on teaching junior college students about population and national conditions, new marriage and childbearing concepts, it said.

Senior college students and graduate students could be taught through "case analysis, group discussion on maintaining intimate relationships and communication between the sexes."

The courses would be able to help them "improve their ability to correctly understand marriage and love and manage love relationships."

A girl who attends a school with classmates whose mothers work is more likely to be in the workforce when she has a child herself than a girl who grows up in local circles where most mothers stay at home, Cornell researchers have found.

“Role models pull girls in different directions in adolescence, a period when preferences are formed, when they decide what to do in their life,” said Eleonora Patacchini, the Stephen and Barbara Friedman Professor of Economics in the College of Arts and Sciences. “When they decide whether to return to work after having a child, they remember the mothers and fathers of their peers.”

Women trail men in the workforce largely because of the “child penalty” – women leaving work upon having a child and not returning. Social norms and culture influence a girls’ later decisions about participation in the work force; when she looked into precisely how, Patacchini, with doctoral student Giulia Olivero and Henrik Kleven, professor of economics at Princeton University, found that greater exposure to working moms at a very local level – the school – decreases the child penalty for girls. Meanwhile, exposure to working fathers increases the child penalty, a “striking” asymmetric effect, Patacchini said.

Girls who are socialized in an environment where most mothers work are more likely to develop a gender-role ideal that reconciles career and motherhood, they conjecture, compared with girls who are socialized in an environment where most mothers stay at home.

...

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17478245

Archived

It's no secret that President Xi Jinping's government uses technology companies to help maintain the nation's massive surveillance apparatus.

But in addition to forcing businesses operating in China to stockpile and hand over info about their users for censorship and state-snooping purposes, a black market for individuals' sensitive data is also booming. Corporate and government insiders have access to this harvested private info, and the financial incentives to sell the data to fraudsters and crooks to exploit.

...

"The data is being collected by rich and powerful people that control technology companies and work in the government, but it can also be used against them in all of these scams and fraud and other low-level crimes," [SpyCloud infosec researcher Aurora] Johnson says.

...

To get their hands on the personal info, Chinese data brokers often recruit shady insiders with wanted ads seeking "friends" working in government, and promise daily income of 20,000 to 70,000 yuan ($2,700 and $9,700) in exchange for harvested information. This data is then used to pull off scams, fraud, and suchlike.

Some of these data brokers also claim to have "signed formal contracts" with the big three Chinese telecom companies: China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom. The brokers' marketing materials tout they are able to legally obtain and sell details of people's internet habits via the Chinese telcos' deep packet inspection systems, which monitor as well as manage and store network traffic. (The West has also seen this kind of thing.)

Crucially, this level of surveillance by the telcos gives their employees access to users' browsing data and other info, which workers can then swipe and then resell themselves through various brokers.

...

"There is a huge ecosystem of Chinese breached and leaked data, and I don't know that a lot of Western cybersecurity researchers are looking at this," Johnson continued. "It poses privacy risks to all Chinese people across all groups. And then it also gives us Western cybersecurity researchers a really interesting source to track some of these actors that have been targeting critical infrastructure."

Archived

It's no secret that President Xi Jinping's government uses technology companies to help maintain the nation's massive surveillance apparatus.

But in addition to forcing businesses operating in China to stockpile and hand over info about their users for censorship and state-snooping purposes, a black market for individuals' sensitive data is also booming. Corporate and government insiders have access to this harvested private info, and the financial incentives to sell the data to fraudsters and crooks to exploit.

...

"The data is being collected by rich and powerful people that control technology companies and work in the government, but it can also be used against them in all of these scams and fraud and other low-level crimes," [SpyCloud infosec researcher Aurora] Johnson says.

...

To get their hands on the personal info, Chinese data brokers often recruit shady insiders with wanted ads seeking "friends" working in government, and promise daily income of 20,000 to 70,000 yuan ($2,700 and $9,700) in exchange for harvested information. This data is then used to pull off scams, fraud, and suchlike.

Some of these data brokers also claim to have "signed formal contracts" with the big three Chinese telecom companies: China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom. The brokers' marketing materials tout they are able to legally obtain and sell details of people's internet habits via the Chinese telcos' deep packet inspection systems, which monitor as well as manage and store network traffic. (The West has also seen this kind of thing.)

Crucially, this level of surveillance by the telcos gives their employees access to users' browsing data and other info, which workers can then swipe and then resell themselves through various brokers.

...

"There is a huge ecosystem of Chinese breached and leaked data, and I don't know that a lot of Western cybersecurity researchers are looking at this," Johnson continued. "It poses privacy risks to all Chinese people across all groups. And then it also gives us Western cybersecurity researchers a really interesting source to track some of these actors that have been targeting critical infrastructure."

Archived

It's not just Microsoft and Crowdstrike: Cloudflare, the internet infrastructure giant, experienced a major outage on November 14th, resulting in the irreversible loss of over half of its log data. The outage, which lasted for 3.5 hours, stemmed from a faulty software update that crippled the company’s log service, preventing it from delivering crucial data to customers.

Log services are essential for network operations, allowing businesses to analyze traffic patterns, troubleshoot issues, and detect malicious activity. Cloudflare’s log service, which processes massive volumes of data, relies on a tool called Logpush to package and deliver this information to customers.

However, an update to Logpush on November 14th contained a critical error. As Cloudflare explained in their incident report, the update failed to instruct auxiliary tools to forward the collected logs, leading to a situation where logs were gathered but never delivered. This data was subsequently erased from the cache, resulting in permanent loss.

“A misconfiguration in one part of the system caused a cascading overload in another part of the system, which was itself misconfigured. Had it been properly configured, it could have prevented the loss of logs,” Cloudflare stated in their report.

While engineers quickly identified the flaw and rolled back the update, this triggered a cascading failure. The system was flooded with an overwhelming influx of log data, including data from users who hadn’t even configured Logpush, further exacerbating the issue.

Cloudflare has issued an apology for the incident and the permanent loss of user data.

"Universal basic income usually covers people’s basic needs but we want to see what effect this unconditional lump sum has on people’s mental and physical health, whether they choose to work or not," says Will Stronge, the director of research at the thinktank Autonomy, which is backing the plan.