[takihito]

It's all thanks to President Trump's efforts, unfortunately.

[tristanj]

No, this is a result of a concerted effort by the Chinese decades in the making.

[tim333]

I have it down as a normal exponential tech growth thing. Silicon solar was invented in the US and would have got big without the Chinese although they have sped it along rather.

It's been fairly close to Kurzweil's doubling every couple of years prediction https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2016/03/futurist-ray-k... and exponential growth could keep on for ages before we hit Kardashev 2.

[tristanj]

That "prediction" is from 2016 and is ex-post-facto. China began investing tens of billions into solar in 2009, and quadrupled down in 2013 when it began pouring hundreds of billions in.

It's easy to "predict" the future years after gigantic sums of money are invested into making something happen.

[vrganj]

Trump doesn't get credit for the rest of the world doing the obvious thing and moving towards basically free energy that is good for the environment and frees us from dependence on despots.