I don't mind buying from china, as long as they're not irreplaceable essentials (like oil). Solar panels and -batteries are fine as long as they meet safety standards and don't have backdoors, and for all the fearmongering that Chinese made tech has backdoors in them, nobody seems to have found any evidence of that. And since it's electronics, any chip and any software can be investigated and taken apart by both amateur hackers and government funded (IT) security bureaus. Nothing. Unless I missed it, but I don't think something as big as that would go by quietly.
> [..] for all the fearmongering that Chinese made tech has backdoors in them, nobody seems to have found any evidence of that. [..]
Are you asserting no backdoors were found in Chinese made tech? I'm not sure how it'd happen in solar panels (which sucks, since I own a couple of these). Another thing to keep in mind is plausible deniability. If you don't patch software, it will be vulnerable, which is an issue in networked software, especially. So what I have seen happening (and I can name some examples of companies here, both Chinese and Taiwanese) where vulnerabilities are simply not patched. Sometimes, they're plain obvious.
I have seen KRACK vulnerability not getting patched. I have seen old MiFi without proper firmware updates, like ever. I have seen motherboard update software still using HTTP instead of HTTPS. And in the world of IoT, it has been a huge mess from the get-go.
Furthermore, the core network of a major telco here was maintained by Chinese engineers who were flown from China. You can probably guess the company name here.
The tactic is obviously not limited to China or Taiwan only, but it can be tackled with reproducible builds and FOSS.
Yes, but it won't matter. The state energy firms of EU countries are going heavily into debt to survive this crisis, and it'll just turn from "paying high electricity prices because oil is expensive" to "paying high energy prices to repay state debt".
I mean it'll help in the sense that energy supply will switch to renewable sources, sure. Great for the climate, hopefully, But it won't help in lowering energy cost.
And before you say "but solar panels". A bunch of states have already started pretty heavily taxing them.
Which state energy firms? Most countries have mostly privatized generation with just the grid in public ownership. EDF is something of an exception, but they have very different economics (and the nuclear fleet).
> "paying high energy prices to repay state debt"
The whole range of general taxation is available for that.
> A bunch of states have already started pretty heavily taxing them.
* making everyone to use natural gas for heating by making it much cheaper than electricity
* slowing down the EV rollout by keeping to subsidize gas and diesel
could definitely be seen as a scheme to make the fossil fuel gravy train last as long as possible.
And that's not even talking about the absolutely out there schemes that didn't succeed like hydrogen powered vehicles (with most of hydrogen coming from fossil fuels and you can theoretically switch to zero emission one but you never would have because the fossil one is always going to be cheaper because making hydrogen is difficult).
Gas for heating used to be the standard but is on its way out now. My house hasn't had a gas connection for 8 years, and many people qre switching to heat pumps and other cleaner methods of heating.
I'm going to guess if net energy use goes up, due to a glut of renewable energy, the gaps on cloudy, windless days will result in greater fossil fuel use than before.
There need to be assurances renewables are replacing fossil fuels rather than just adding capacity.
> Alas, it is exactly the intermittent renewables that create a dependency on fossil fuels.
First of all, this is an insane statement.
> Unless you have nuclear
Second of all, with nuclear most countries will still be dependent on other countries for their fuel needs. So it doesn't solve the problem discussed here at all.