German Solar Firms Eclipsed by Chinese Rivals

[xchrom]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,784653,00.html

The mayor of the eastern German town of Bitterfeld-Wolfen, Petra Wust, is all too familiar with booms and busts. The region was a center for the chemical industry in communist East Germany. Wust experienced at first hand how the industry was wound down after the fall of the Berlin Wall, putting about 50,000 people out of work.

Wust was also there when the region experienced rapid growth, earning it the nickname "Solar Valley." In 1999, as the town's then-treasurer, she helped persuade Q-Cells, a manufacturer of photovoltaic cells, to locate its headquarters in Bitterfeld-Wolfen.

The town bent over backwards to smooth the way for the company, says Wust, and the effort paid off. The solar panel business flourished, and the company, which began its operations with 19 employees, soon had more than 1,000 people on its payroll. When Q-Cells went public, one member of its works council even became a millionaire.

A dream seemed to have come true for many people and for the region, which had once been notorious for the pollution caused by lignite-fuelled power plants and the chemical industry. One photovoltaic manufacturer after another located in the area. The clean, future-oriented industry generated jobs and income, employing as many as 10,000 people in its heyday.

[phantom power]

1. Generally speaking, it is very very hard to compete against extremely low wages and...

a near-total lack of regulations.

[xchrom]

2. & I always thought tariffs were for situations like this.

My bad.

[phantom power]

3. Evidently our plutocrat overlords have decided to take the alternative approach...

of making the west just like China, where we all make extremely low wages and live without any regulations too.

x(

[xchrom]

4. indeed. i can't help but remember the hoopla that involved china's big whig

visit to germany earlier this year.

seems ironic now.

[Yo_Mama]

5. Not to mention lower environmental costs

Solar panels aren't that "clean" to manufacture, and Chinese firms seem to spend much less on environmental issues, such as safe toxic waste disposal.

[SpoonFed]

6. Dont worry...

the Germans will be back on the PV manufacturing heap once the Chinese cheap nuke reactor industry starts waste disposaling itself all over that end of that continent.
:sarcasm:

[Yo_Mama]

7. I wouldn't wish that on any nation.

I hope not.

[Nihil]

8. He would.

He's been typing one-handed since March in the desperate search for fatalities.

:eyes:

[SpoonFed]

9. And so...

who or what exactly are you one-handing for, might I ask?
Oh never mind.