China Smartly Lower Solar Subsidy by 30% to Rmb 7 per Watt in 2012 to Lower Burden

China which is home to the biggest solar industry in the world and most of the top solar panel manufacturers has decided to lower subsidy in 2012. Note China did not pass a Feed in Tariff Law for a long time as prices of solar energy remained high. But after a massive crash in solar prices and energy in 2011 it passed a FIT law in late 2011 to take advantage. This resulted in a big jump resulting in China becoming one of the top 5 markets in 2011 . Now China is set to become one of the top 3 markets in 2012 if not the biggest . This is due to the fact that other European solar panel markets are rapidly reducing subsidies and China needs to support its solar companies many of which are effectively insolvent like LDK.

Some big German companies like Solon and Solar Millennium have already announced bankruptcy.Note Chinese companies too would have shut down but the state owned Chinese banks are keeping them alive with loans at ridiculous interest rates.LDK  which is buying Sunways is almost insolvent as well with its convertibles trading at less than 50c on the dollar in Singapore.It has more than $3 billion in debt compared to its market cap of around $600 million.It faces massive losses in the coming qtrs and can’t serve the interest payments much less expand.The strong support of the Chinese government for its green companies is keeping them alive.Chinese solar panels have become super cheap due to companies selling at below cost and massive scale.Note all the cheap solar panel brands in the world are Chinese with the exception of First Solar and some Asians.

LDK has managed to spend 22 million Euros despite burning hundred of millions of dollars in cash because it has got the Chinese government trillions backing it.So while Western companies burn and crash,the big crony Chinese companies can expand and acquire.

China has decided to lower its FIT by a big 30% cut to Rmb 7 /watt to lower the subsidy outgo. With the panel prices having fallen so much, it is still profitable to build solar systems at these prices without giving any outsized returns to solar project developers. Unlike many countries where FIT has led to massive unsustainable booms like Spain,Czech, China is proactively cutting any chances of a boom at the bud. Note most of the growth in the Chinese solar market will only help the Chinese solar companies because of their low costs, home advantage and implicit support of the utiltiies.

China’s solar market growth has hit the rocket phase in late 2011 with the announcement of the long awaited national Feed in Tariff . Many of the Chinese utilities have set up large solar farms utilizing the cheap solar panels produced by Chinese solar panel companies. Note Chinese solar companies are the dominant players in the world having almost killed the western solar industry in the last couple of years. With cheap costs and massive government support, China is almost ruling the solar industry globally . In the domestic Chinese market they have even a bigger advantage given the local home conditions and preference of domestic companies . Note China become home to the biggest wind turbine companies when China enacted the domestic content requirements in 2006. With the solar industry , the Chinese government does not need this law as its companies already possess massive advantages over the foreign competition.