In the wake of the news that Evergreen Solar is shutting down its US manufacturing I've seen a lot of trite and lazy commentary about US manufacturing and "picking winners." Some conservative critics see an opportunity to bash, well, stuff liberals support, but I think they're mostly* misguided on a number of levels.
I deleted a longish and rambling draft of this post, so I'll just point out that the greater degree of financial support (not even counting the managed float of the RMB) is more important by a factor of 2-4 in the lower cost of Chinese PV modules, rather than labor costs or environmental regs, so it isn't inevitable that US manufacturing can't compete. First Solar is proving that pretty well, and the Chinese firm Suntech is opening US manufacturing now. If 10% of the annual cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were pumped into solar to reduce the capex of domestic producers, we'd be making the least expensive, most efficient modules in the world in short order.
Anyway, for the sake of brevity here, I'll just say that I'll be happy to explain the fate of Evergreen for the price of a beer sometime. Suffice it to say, String ribbon wafers were an important and potentially disruptive technological advance, but both outside forces and apparently fundamental limitations of the process have hindered the technology, and the company. I should add that I do not work for Evergreen or any PV module manufacturer.
*There are obviously important debates over various aspects of the issue about which reasonable people can disagree, but Michele Malkin and her cohorts are not reasonable people.
