The United States Has Blocked a Plan by India to Expand Solar Power and Create Local Jobs
This piece first appeared at Climate News Network.
LONDON—India has been told that it cannot go ahead as planned with its ambitious plan for a huge expansion of its renewable energy sector, because it seeks to provide work for Indian people. The case against India was brought by the US.
The ruling, by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), says India’s National Solar Mission—which would create local jobs, while bringing electricity to millions of people—must be changed because it includes a domestic content clause requiring part of the solar cells to be produced nationally.
What a difference two months make. On 12 December last year, US President Barack Obama praised the Paris Agreement on tackling climate change, just hours after it was finally concluded. “We’ve shown what’s possible when the world stands as one,” he said, adding that the agreement “represents the best chance we have to save the one planet that we’ve got”.
Clear-cut victory
The WTO says that its dispute settlement panel “handed the US a clear-cut victory . . . when it found that local content requirements India imposed on private solar power producers in a massive solar project violated trade rules, although the two sides are still discussing a potential settlement to the dispute”. ................(more)
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_united_states_has_blocked_a_plan_by_india_to_expand_20160226
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Solar cells represent a huge toxicological hazard, provide very little energy, and are an unfortunate fad that will leave the world even more impoverished than it was in the first place.
In the last ten years, the world "invested" nearly two trillion dollars in solar and wind energy, which combined do not produce even 5 of the 560 exajoules humanity consumes each year. For this money we could have doubled the per capita annual income of a billion Indians.
As a result of this so called "investment" in so called "renewable energy," the world is burning more coal, more gas, and more petroleum than ever. We can see the signature very clearly in the planetary atmosphere. The year just passed is either the worst or second worst (depending on the final compilation of the data in March 2016) ever observed in recorded history for increases in carbon dioxide.
I gave the details here: It's looking very bad these last few weeks at the Mauna Loa carbon dioxide observatory. Another poster in that thread produced this telling graphic that sums it up perfectly.
It's clearly not working and it will not work. The reason is pure physics, low energy to mass ratio, reliance on unsustainable materials, process costs, including environmental process costs, unreliability, ignored disposal issues, and the requirement for instantaneous back up.
The misplaced faith in this technology has been an ethical disaster of the first order, but unfortunately the world is oblivious to that fact. I am very proud to among the first to question this disastrous if popular policy of generating vast amounts of future intractable electronic waste.
Solar PV electricity is not sustainable; it is not safe; it is not economic.
Happily for India, they have one of the most innovative approaches to nuclear fuel management in the world.
Whatever the reason that India is not participating in this future nightmare, the result is a positive.
