Comment by kccqzy
3 days ago
That's a blatantly disingenuous argument that misses the point. Setting aside the accuracy of the 25-year figure, is it easier to buy solar panels once to use them for 25 years or stockpile 25 years' worth of fossil fuel?
I'm not arguing against maintenance items like cleaning, because obviously fossil fuel power plants need maintenance too. I'm directly responding to the perceived geopolitical risk. The question is: is it better for a country to experience a geopolitical risk with a solar-panel-producing nation or with an oil-producing nation? Bringing up items like cleaning is laughably irrelevant because where's the geopolitical risk in cleaning a solar panel?
Making a solar panel isn't rocket science. China has just cornered the market right now. If supply dries up, you can make your own solar panels. It will take a few years to get the volume up but your current supply of panels will last until you do.
> The question is: is it better for a country to experience a geopolitical risk with a solar-panel-producing nation or with an oil-producing nation?
If that's your only question, the answer is straightforward then, there's more oil producing nations than solar panels producing nations making the risk with oil lower.
China is so big in this sector that I don't think that you could even create a real strategy where they get <25% market share in the country solar imports.
You could somewhat mitigate this risk by buying a stock worth 5 years of panel installation of the country but as far as I know, nobody is doing that.