The growth of the solar power industry is poisoning land in China, according to the Washington Post.
Polysilicon, which is widely used to make solar panels, is in short supply. In the rush to make it cheaply, a Chinese company reportedly is dumping toxic waste into the ground, killing wildlife and endangering human health.
The newspaper describes green fields in the nation's eastern central Henan Province that have turned snow white from the powdery waste of silicon tetrachloride, four tons of which result from every ton of polysilicon created. Toxic hydrogen chloride gas and acids waft from the waste.
The waste is allegedly coming from Chinese polysilicon maker Luoyang Zhonggui High-Technology, a supplier of rising solar power star Suntech Power, according to the Washington Post.
"In China, polysilicon plants are the new dot-coms," writes Ariana Eunjung Cha, reporting that new factories there are set to produce more than twice the amount of polysilicon as is currently manufactured in the world. Silicon tetrachloride can be recycled. But manufacturers reportedly can make polysilicon about two-thirds more cheaply if they ignore environmental protections.
Henan Province is in the eastern central part of China.
(Credit: Google Maps)U.S. politicians and activists have been pushing for "green-collar jobs" to fill the gap left by the dwindling blue-collar economy.
"Green" drywall maker Serious Materials is pursuing building a U.S. plant. And Suntech Power has expressed interest in building U.S. factories, helping to avoid the high price of shipping solar panels. However, watchdog groups and environmental laws in the United States would likely aim to prevent or punish the kind of dumping Suntech's supplier has been accused of.
Other unanticipated side effects of new "clean" technologies include rising food costs linked to the growing of corn for ethanol as well as the clearing of Indonesian rainforests to grow palm for biofuels. And China's Three Gorges Dam is flooding enormous swaths of land to make possible the world's largest hydropower plant.
Update: Suntech Power Holdings, an aggressive, rising star in the solar world, said in a conference call yesterday that it hopes to build plants in the U.S. to help it break into the market here.
"We are currently in discussion with the governors of three different states who have been recruiting us to build factories," said Roger Efird, president of Suntech America, the company's U.S. subsidiary, according to a report on Greentech Media. Efird was speaking on a conference call for the Solar Energy Industries Association. More details will likely emerge on November 15 when Suntech reports earnings.
The factories could employ up to 1,000 people in the states in the next few years, Efird reportedly said.
Update: In a phone interview with News.com, chief strategy officer Steve Chan said that they company is in the decision making stage. "The question is how to get to the point where the costs make sense," he said. Suntech might not move to the stage where construction begins for one to two years.
Earlier this week, green drywall maker Serious Materials raised $50 million to build factories in the U.S.
U.S. factories will also let Suntech compete in what many believe will be the largest solar market in the future. The company right now sells most of its products to Europe. Five years ago, Suntech was an asterisk. Now, it is the third largest producer of solar cells in the world and one of the fastest growing. It benefits from cheap Chinese labor, but also depth in research and development (the science behind its panels came out of the University of New South Wales), strong ties to equipment makers, and volume discounts on silicon. Executives in China make less too: there probably aren't 10 people in the company who make more than $200,000, said Chan earlier this year.
European and Japanese manufacturers have trouble competing on price, and Chinese manufacturers have trouble keeping up with their quality.
U.S. factories, though, will challenge the company's low cost position, as Chan noted. Suntech, though is testing out different strategies to get around this. One idea: Suntech is developing its own manufacturing equipment that could reduce costs.
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