China

“You know, in the last hours of negotiation on Saturday, there was a fight between India, China, and the U.S. On one side, and all the other countries on the other side to try and change one word from phase out to phase down.”

“And that two or three page document that Came on Wednesday was what then set the tone for the deal to happen on the Saturday, and in that deal is where we had the language around phase down of coal, and that's the language that eventually made it into the fina…”

“The vast majority is mined in Australia and South America and processed in China.”

“And to get away from that and to start relying on renewable energies, it doesn't just take you know, a technical fix. It's sort of a bureaucratic issue. You got to rework departments. There are regions of the country that have been relying on this for growth. …”

“Over the years, we've seen massive renewable energy projects that were built and not connected to the grid for a long time. We saw large, sustainable buildings and supposedly eco-friendly cities that were sitting empty, and much of this development happened in…”

“When it came to these Winter Olympics, the last two countries running were Kazakhstan and China.”

“China's recovery from the pandemic has been fairly rapid, particularly in, in industry. So that means that a lot of electricity was being used, particularly as you're getting into winter. And Coal prices were down, and so coal-fired power plants, they weren't …”

“The idea that this is, is, is creating a sort of a brand new sustainable economic model, it doesn't really make sense, and it's why I keep going back to this idea of a bubble. You know, you rebuild for one area, you bring in perhaps new ways of powering things…”

“A small number of countries dominate not only where those are mined and produced, but where they're refined and processed, particularly that is in China.”

“When Europe gets in a bidding war with Asia for cargoes of LNG in the short run, that means that Japan and China and so on see the same price as in Europe. So they are equally incentivized to save oil, gas, gas-fired electricity.”

“Just to give you an idea of the scale, the United States has a capacity of about seven gigawatts of solar manufacturing, whereas China has a manufacturing capacity of about three 300 gigawatts of solar manufacturing. One company, Longi Solar, has a manufacturi…”

“The United States is not the only game in town when it comes to the solar industry. We are only maybe 10% of the global industry, so China has plenty of other customers to sell solar to.”

“Everybody hopes that the lockdowns in China are over, and that China will pick up growing again, and then we are even in a worse situation this winter.”

“So China refines 65% of the lithium worldwide, and it may come from other places. A lot of it comes from Australia, but it's refined in China, and that means that if there are trade tensions, they have control over something that is important to the U.S.”

“The technology that A-one-two-three systems pioneered, a lithium iron phosphate cathode, was not a failure. It is the dominant chemistry in lithium ion batteries coming out of China today.”

“So today, China accounts for 83% of all lithium-ion battery manufacturing, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.”

“The largest electrolyzer operating outside of China is just 20 megawatts in size.”

“We're selling about a gigawatt of them every year. Most of those are deployed in China.”

“All of the battery, virtually all of the battery grade manganese in the world, it's like 99%, comes from China.”

“And the fires of twenty-twenty in our state wiped out 15 years of progress, and if wildfires were a country, they'd be ranked number four behind China, U.S., and India in terms of carbon emissions.”

“About half the world's global cement production takes place in China”

“The sheer investment happening in China is enough to make me bullish that, at least when it comes to coal, we're likely to see a steeper drop off than the IEA expects.”

“China in particular is adding clean energy at an absolutely mind-boggling pace. They're expected to add a 150 gigawatts of solar in twenty-twenty-three. That's roughly five times what the U.S. Is projected to add, and they're projected to top a terawatt of tot…”

“China has 22 nuclear plants under construction today. 22. And 70 planned.”

“With China dominating so much, between 70 to 90% of key precursor, you know materials and kind of components of lithium ion batteries that very few, if any, EVs sold in the U.S. Will be eligible for that 7500 per EV tax credit”

“China has over 80% of the manufacturing capacity for every component, important component, in a solar module.”

“And I would argue that in all three of those markets, you're seeing slowing growth because of grid capacity constraints.”

“Even if all the different announcements, whether in China or in the rest of the world, come to fruition, the share that China makes up isn't really going to change that much. Like, maybe a couple percentage points as other Countries around the globe build out …”

“But then, you know, this year and next year we're sort of hitting, we're kind of like hitting past that inflection point and growth rates are actually going to slow in many different markets. China being one of them. So growth's actually flat over the next sev…”

“In China, there's a big push for lithium iron phosphate. In the U.S., we have, you know, sort of standard lithium ion batteries that have a lot of nickel, manganese, and cobalt in the materials, and those things are hard to source, and rising in cost, and some…”

“So it represents about 45% of the total global market in gigawatt hour terms. In gigawatt terms, it's actually higher. It's almost half the global market.”

“So essentially in China, about like more than 20, I want to say 26 provinces in China have mandates for if you want to build a new solar project or a new wind project, you need to attach batteries to it.”

“There's one area that the US is still beating China and others at, and that is venture capital and private equity.”

“The hydro processes that are up and running at any scale are happening in China.”

“When you have somebody like on the left, Senator Joe Manchin, who made the IRA possible, pushing back aggressively against the Biden administration in terms of how they've implemented the law, concerns about You know, foreign companies, Chinese companies that …”

“Some of these products are only made in China, and we want to build that capacity here, but there are demand for these products, and we don't have the capacity to meet that demand right now. We will in a couple of years once we build all these facilities.”

“Coal still makes up 60%, 66% of their power generation. In India, it's 74%, and even in Germany, where we always talk about them being leaders in Europe on climate, it's 30%.”

“China sells more EVs than any, than by far than any country in the world, and it's state of the art. Chinese batteries, the whole supply chain, and Chinese EVs can compete with anyone's EVs around the world, including Tesla, including Lucid.”

“China has become the largest exporter of cars in the world just over the last year.”

“The latest version of that that I'm very worried about is large tech companies acknowledging, hey, you know, we're not going to lose this AI thing. I think they're going to blame it on China and say, hey, it's a national security. Security thing we can't lose,…”

“In our three years of actively engaging the market, we found just one crystal and silicon module maker that wasn't dependent on Asian-based aluminum frames. So it is 98% of the supply is coming out of Asia. Most of it's China.”

“And the unfortunate reality of today for the solar supply chain is that there are parts, components of the, you know, core solar supply chain that are heavily dominated by manufacturing in, in China, and that makes the industry vulnerable to supply shocks.”

“It's very clear that competitiveness with China is a bipartisan issue in this country. it is going to remain a priority for either administration in the new year after the election”

“And we're talking to manufacturers in China about, you know, moving equipment prior to tariffs getting imposed. We're talking to manufacturers about buying U.S. Equipment as soon as it's available, and we're talking to Other parties about buying from parties, …”

“Now, the geopolitics are different now than they were in the early days of solar, and China can't play that game again. At least not in Europe and in the US.”

“Ultimately, you know, they took a bet on Tesla on our team on the energy side and it ended up paying off for them when they ended up getting an opportunity to participate with the vehicle business in China and vehicle business in other places.”

“The three countries that dominate lithium-six supply are Russia, North Korea, and China.”

“Most of you know, 85 or 88% of the world's solar hardware gets made in China. We know that. Most of that is being made in Xinjiang.”

“Internationally, there's around 60 countries that do some form of cloud seeding. China is the leader, and they've been doing cloud seeding for a very, very long time, but generally speaking, it's not done very much today.”

“There's no rare earths or critical minerals, no kind of Supply chain sensitivities or vulnerabilities, right? Like nothing from the inputs or the tools has to come from China.”

“In China, they're doing it for 3000 dollars a kilowatt, similar, you know, similar price points with South Korea.”