China has been rolling back subsidies because they won solar panels. No other country is even remotely close to market strength as China here and obviously for Chinese it makes sense to reduce incentives but does that make sense for the US which has 1% of this market power?

> Between January and May, China added 198 GW of solar and 46 GW of wind, enough to generate as much electricity as Indonesia or Turkey [1]

1 - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/26/china-breaks-m...

China "won solar panels" because they subsidised the production to the point that their companies could sell panels cheaper than they cost to make, and then these companies were allowed to dump them below cost into the western markets to destroy all the local innovation. Germany and the US in particular just sat back and watched that happen.

However, market share doesn't really translate into the economics of large scale generation. The projects that are marginal (or negative) in the US and rest of the world for that matter, are costed using whatever the cheapest panels or materials available are. Whether they are local or not does not matter. You are conflating two unrelated things here (local manufacturing capability and power generation e.g. actually deploying renewables).

China meeting arbitrary targets is also beside the point. They are building a tonne of solar and wind, but they are also building more coal too. (Refer to my previous comment in how they along with many other G7 and developed nations are investing more in coal than they were in 2020).

GP made some specific claims which were demonstratably false. The points you raise here aren't particularly related to those.

they're building that coal in the role of gas peaker plants - backup power. It will probably never be used at any significant % of capacity, as the solar and battery revolution continues to astound in its speed.

>Nobody but the 3rd world is increasing investments in coal/oil

This was the assertion. It is demonstratably false.

> We have long been told that renewables are cheaper in every way that matters, so let's see the economics of that play out.

Renewables are cheaper now than they used to be. Why? The same reason anything is cheaper the longer you make it: technological improvement, economies of scale, production efficiency, increased # customers, reduced capex, amortized r&d, etc.

"the economics of that" aren't black and white. Just because something is expensive today doesn't mean it will be expensive tomorrow. But if something cheaper exists today, and nobody invests in the expensive thing (because "the market" doesn't see immediate cash gains in it), then the expensive thing never has the opportunity to become cheap.

> The renewable industry in the US was wrought with companies seizing as many renewable credits and subsidies as they can, while providing as little as possible to show for them.

The "show" is long-term. That's the whole point of all green energy: it's expensive at the beginning, and then becomes increasingly cheaper over time, to the point you start saving money, and then you keep saving money. But to ever get to that point, you have to invest big at the start. That's what the subsidies are for!

China has a massive and cheap labor force and decades of manufacturing expertise. That makes their products/services cheap and advanced. Unless we literally take over Mexico, we don't have the labor. And unless we start investing now, we'll never have the expertise. Without subsidies, we will never get on renewables, and we will always pay more for energy. Since the whole future of the world is dependent on energy, it might be a good idea for us to invest in it!

>But if something cheaper exists today, and nobody invests in the expensive thing

I think you are talking past me. The green bodies have constantly touted how we already reached the inflection point where renewables are cheaper than coal, nuclear, etc. The quiet part that isn't spoken aloud is that these renewables were only economically positive with substantial subsidies and credits. You can't have an honest conversation when the water is mudied to such an extent.

why does that matter anymore? they are cheaper now without incentives, so whether they were subsidized in the past doesnt really matter right?

Except this isn't the case. GP talks about how removing the incentives is "going to have a big negative impact on the economy" due to all these green projects no longer being viable. Indeed, whether they were subsidised or not in the past doesn't matter... but it's also not relevant to this discussion either.