Commentary: Bans on electric cars and solar panels? Itβs not so implausible
Weβre already seeing evidence of this on multiple continents. Local content requirements and tariff barriers on solar panels, designed to build up domestic manufacturing industries, have operated in many places (including India, the United States, South Africa, and Indonesia) asΒ soft bans that have pushed up costs, slowed deployments, and favoured incumbent fossil-fired power generation and emissions.Β
The European Union, which doesnβt impose tariffs on photovoltaic imports, installed nearly twice as much solar last year as the US, and more than seven times as much as India, despite weather thatβs far less suited for the technology.
FEAR OF βCHINESE-CONNECTED ELECTRIC VEHICLESβ
Electric vehicles look like they may be the next front in this conflict. Chinaβs shift from one of the worldβs biggestΒ car importers to among its biggest exporters has troubled its trading partners. Most of the export drive to date has come from conventional automobiles, but China’s innovative technological edge in EVs has put electric models in the spotlight.
So far, the outrage has been fairly muted. Tariffs of 25 per cent imposed under the Trump administration mean that few Chinese vehicles appear on US roads anyway, and in Europe theyβre still not a dominant presence.
Nonetheless, Brussels last October announced an investigationΒ into whether Chinese cars had benefited from unfair subsidies, and the White House last month startedΒ an inquiry into Chinese technology in “connected vehicles”, a category that sweeps in electric cars as well as many conventional ones.
Source: CNA