kravietz 🦇 on Nostr: Economist Daniel Lacalle writes: China is obliterating the last bastion of European ...
Economist Daniel Lacalle writes:
China is obliterating the last bastion of European industry, with the unconditional support of the European Union itself.
As a reminder, Germany has in the same way destroyed its PV industry and gave it all away to #China. But the problem is not in China, who just grabs business opportunities, but in EU societies childish attitude to environment protection:
People hear “mines and factories are bad environment!” so any new mine in EU is being blocked.
Environmental requirements for existing and new industrial plants are high, so manufacturing there costs money - but this makes sense if we want to protect environment.
But it makes sense only if the whole supply chain is built with environment protection in mind!
It doesn’t make any sense if you save 10 tons of greenhouse gases in EU on assembling an EV when making these parts in China already emitted 1000 tons due to poor environmental standards!
Environmental science has methodology for that - it’s called life-cycle environmental impact and accounts for manufacturing, operations and decommissioning.
EU societies need to decide if they want “free trade” (=cheap but dirty) or “environmental responsibility” (=less cheap but cleaner). You can’t have both.
If they want “free trade” then the whole exercise in “sustainable economy” becomes a rather pointless virtue signalling, because your “operations” stage can’t sustainable if the whole life-cycle chain is not sustainable.
If they want environmental responsibility, then the free trade needs to be limited by means of enforcing the same environmental standards down the supply chain.
Yes, this means PV or EV from China will be more expensive. If you also want to enforce labour protection standards, modern slavery prevention, gender equality etc you will ultimately end up with prices comparable as if these PV and EV were manufactured in EU.
Of course, your favourite investment banks like BNEF and Lazard won’t like it, because they won’t be able to run around and shout “PV is the cheapest!” Yes, it’s “the cheapest” but only if it was manufactured in Asia using slave labour and poor environmental standards.
Ultimately, we - as EU citizens - need to decide if we want to please investment banks or we want clean environment 🤷
China is obliterating the last bastion of European industry, with the unconditional support of the European Union itself.
As a reminder, Germany has in the same way destroyed its PV industry and gave it all away to #China. But the problem is not in China, who just grabs business opportunities, but in EU societies childish attitude to environment protection:
People hear “mines and factories are bad environment!” so any new mine in EU is being blocked.
Environmental requirements for existing and new industrial plants are high, so manufacturing there costs money - but this makes sense if we want to protect environment.
But it makes sense only if the whole supply chain is built with environment protection in mind!
It doesn’t make any sense if you save 10 tons of greenhouse gases in EU on assembling an EV when making these parts in China already emitted 1000 tons due to poor environmental standards!
Environmental science has methodology for that - it’s called life-cycle environmental impact and accounts for manufacturing, operations and decommissioning.
EU societies need to decide if they want “free trade” (=cheap but dirty) or “environmental responsibility” (=less cheap but cleaner). You can’t have both.
If they want “free trade” then the whole exercise in “sustainable economy” becomes a rather pointless virtue signalling, because your “operations” stage can’t sustainable if the whole life-cycle chain is not sustainable.
If they want environmental responsibility, then the free trade needs to be limited by means of enforcing the same environmental standards down the supply chain.
Yes, this means PV or EV from China will be more expensive. If you also want to enforce labour protection standards, modern slavery prevention, gender equality etc you will ultimately end up with prices comparable as if these PV and EV were manufactured in EU.
Of course, your favourite investment banks like BNEF and Lazard won’t like it, because they won’t be able to run around and shout “PV is the cheapest!” Yes, it’s “the cheapest” but only if it was manufactured in Asia using slave labour and poor environmental standards.
Ultimately, we - as EU citizens - need to decide if we want to please investment banks or we want clean environment 🤷