BP Exits the Solar Industry (via Planet Gore)
Bloomberg:
BP Plc, Europe’s second-largest oil company, will shut its solar power unit and quit the business entirely after 40 years because it’s become unprofitable.
The company will wind down the unit, BP Solar, over several months, Mike Petrucci, the unit’s chief executive officer, told staff in an internal letter last week. About 100 employees will be affected.
BP Solar is withdrawing from an industry that’s facing oversupply and price pressures after Asian competitors increased production. Panel prices plunged 48 percent this year, helping tip three U.S. makers including Solyndra LLC into bankruptcy, and Solon SE (SOO1), Germany’s first listed solar company, filed for insolvency last week.
“The continuing global economic challenges have significantly impacted the solar industry, making it difficult to sustain long-term returns for the company,” Petrucci said in the letter.
The rest here.
Just a few years ago Chu said BP would save the planet
“””” thepompousgit says:
December 21, 2011 at 11:47 am
George E. Smith said @ur momisugly December 21, 2011 at 11:32 am:
“It makes no sense to consume already existing energy supplies, to access other sources, that make even less total energy available to do the useful stuff, we use energy for.”
It never ceases to amaze me that so few people understand this most basic of concepts. “””””
Its’ even much worse than that pompous.
Let’s say I even have a gain (slight). Perhaps I can use one barrel of oil eqivalent, to obtain say 1 1/2 barrels of oil equivalent of swam gas, or sheep fart energy, or even PV solar (fat chance).
So now I have 1 1/2 barrels of oil equivalent energy, that I can use to make beer or whatever; and after I get my beer, I will have 1 1/2 barrels of oil equivalent in waste heat to warm the planet.
Hang on there asec; I almost forgot, I already got one barrel’s worth of waste heat from the enterprise of gathering a barrel and a half of sheep farts.
I could have just used 1 1/2 barrels of oil to make my beer, and not have 2 1/2 barrels of total waste heat.
Did I already say, we get NO HEAT FROM THE SUN ?? We make it ALL right here on earth by wasting solar and other energies.
I really could not care less that China is making solar panels more cheaply. No matter how cheap, solar panels are end user useful only. They are ancillary means of decreasing a home’s burden on the grid. They are not a source of useful centralized energy (city) or for industry.
The Sun Sets and the WInd Dies. We lack a good way to store the energy and thus solar is fair weather at best.
Solar is more expensive than wind and wind is 10 times more expensive than carbon or nuclear.
YOU CANNOT BUILD A RELIABLE ENERGY SUPPLY FROM UNRELIABLE ENERGY SOURCES.
Thank you thepompusgit and che.
NOC’s are by far the largest oil producers in the world. Most people don’t know/understand that.
It’s a sad day here and hopefully we can move those employees to other parts of the company.
Thank you konrad, for your recommendation…..quality should win out over cheap crap but doesn’t any longer. If only people would wake up to the fact that you get what you pay for. 🙁
ChE said @ur momisugly December 21, 2011 at 1:33 pm
“There are other boutique uses as well, traffic signs too far to serve power to, telemetry systems, etc. If you see a solar panel at the side of the road someplace, it’s probably not driven by green fantasies, it’s driven by economics.”
Boutique: “A small shop. spec. A small fashion-shop or department that sells ready-to-wear clothes designed by a couturier; a small shop selling ‘trend-setting’ clothes or other articles, esp. for young or fashionable people.” [from the OED]
A rather odd word to associate with a 65 year-old outback sheep farmer; I can hardly wait to tell him he has a boutique on the roof of the machinery shed. Whoda thunkit? 🙂
ChE said @ur momisugly December 21, 2011 at 1:48 pm
“No, what that means is that the big players in the oil business are the state oil companies in the Middle East and Latin America.”
And I reiterate what the Wiki-bloody-pedia says: “[BP] is the third-largest energy company and fourth-largest company in the world measured by revenues”.
While oil is a very useful, compact energy source, it is far from being the only energy source. The fact that BP is the third largest energy company in the world does not automatically mean they are also the fourth largest oil company in the world. It’s part of the green mantra that ExxonMobil/BP/Shell are Big Oil and the large state-owned petrobusinesses are never mentioned.
Over the past five years, ratepayers in jurisdictions with high uptakes of wind and solar PV have experienced below-average price increases for retail electricity. In fact, the five states with the largest capacities of wind and solar PV saw an average increase in cost/kWh that was not only significantly less than the U.S. average, but also less than the five states with the lowest adoption of solar PV and wind. As the graph illustrates, this statement is true whether cost increases are judged as growth rates or as real dollar figures.
Source: Clean Technica (http://s.tt/14Wsy)
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/12/20/5-states-with-most-solar-wind-energy-had-smallest-increase-in-electricity-prices-2005-2010/
First Solar, an Arizona company, now has the cost of manufacture down to $0.72/Watt, and is looking at $0.52 in 2013.
Warren Buffet bought two large Solar Farms *last week,* and now owns about 4 Gigawatts of Wind, and Solar, Combined.
I guess “when BS talks, money walks”!
I really no longer think we are even close to making renewables cost-effective yet, except for those who are off the grid. Nukes will win every time once fossils run out, anyway.
Kum Dollison says:
“First Solar, an Arizona company, now has the cost of manufacture down to $0.72/Watt, and is looking at $0.52 in 2013.”
And their CEO left 3 months ago and the stock is headed southwards. You shouldn’t believe every press release by the solar industry, they have more spinmeisters than engineers.
What we can see here is BP announcing a tactical withdrawal from a particular segment as it is currently unprofitable. However, like all of its competitors, it will continue to devote vast resources to ‘life after oil’, as, if it does not, it will go bankrupt. These efforts will encompass the full range of renewables, from solar and wind to tidal and geothermal energy. They will also include much energy (no pun intended) spent and very much money invested on the development of clean-burn coal technologies, and stuff like no-CO2 CHP.
There are some who have posted above that think, or would like to think that this is the start of Big Oil walking away from renewables. Dream on, guys. Go ask them. They’ll tell you where the future is.
George E. Smith; said @ur momisugly December 21, 2011 at 1:51 pm
“Its’ even much worse than that pompous.”
Back in the 80s when The Git first began the self-sufficiency lifestyle, rather than making his beer from sheep farts, he used Human Ingenuity™. The cheapest ingredients were real barley malt (not malt extract) and real hops (locally grown). The problem with extracting malt from the grain is that the enzymes responsible for converting the starch to sugars only work within a fairly narrow range of temperatures. Most of the available literature had complicated thermostatically-controlled electrically-operated heaters for the wort. The Git made a giant “teapot cosy” from worn-out woolen jumpers and blankets to enclose the vessel holding the wort.
He pitched his malt into water heated on the wood-burning cookstove at the upper range of temperature and left his thermally well-insulated wort to work overnight. By morning, all the starch was converted to lovely fermentable sugars. At the time he performed a time and motion study of his beer making and concluded that he was “earning” $AU20/hr. That autumn, he was paid $AU5/hr for picking apples.
He never even gave a passing thought to all that naughty PlantFood/GHG/ToxicPollutant [delete whichever is inapplicable] he was making 🙂
BTW Good luck obtaining energy from sheep farts. Vegetable matter makes far more methane than animal manure. I have considered and researched methane gas production, but firewood’s a lot easier.
“BarryW says:
December 21, 2011 at 10:48 am
Their going to play this as just “Big Oil” doing something nefarious and immoral to support their oil prices.”
Surely BP are opening up competitive opportunities to those far more creative and imaginative who will dazzle us with their generation of copious amounts of cheap, solar energy. Just what we need here in the UK this winter with wind farms catching fire we need lots and lots and lots and lots of solar to keep us warm and safe from the icy blast.
It was never profitable really. The subsidies might have covered some of it, but not enough. Well done BP.
Wendy said @ur momisugly December 21, 2011 at 2:11 pm
“Thank you thepompusgit and che.
NOC’s are by far the largest oil producers in the world. Most people don’t know/understand that.
It’s a sad day here and hopefully we can move those employees to other parts of the company.
Thank you konrad, for your recommendation…..quality should win out over cheap crap but doesn’t any longer. If only people would wake up to the fact that you get what you pay for. :-(”
I must admit to being surprised when I made the discovery a few months ago. Another nail in the coffin of Green credibility.
In my 60 years on this bewildering planet, I found that when circumstances seemed most dire that there was a new and exciting opportunity I likely wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.
Some of us avoid cheap crap on the grounds that it’s never cheap; it almost always turns out to cost more in the medium and long term.
Dr. Dave says:
December 21, 2011 at 12:34 pm
pat says:
December 21, 2011 at 10:31 am
“As a former owner of a solar company, I understand this completely. only one solar application makes sense: heating water. The idea that solar panels can do anything other than serve as a boutique power source is simply boneheaded.”
======================================
“pat, I agree with your assessment of “boutique” power sources. My house was built in 1977 (the Carter era) when electricity was supposed to remain incredibly cheap. Alas, it is an all-electric home with ceiling electric radiant heat. It also had a roof mounted solar assist water heating system. This system thermostatically controlled the flow of propylene glycol through the roof mounted solar collectors to a heat exchange unit mounted next to the electric water heater. The other half of the system ran potable water through the heat exchanger to the water heater. I spent a fortune on plumbers keeping this damn system working. ”
============================================================
It does not have to be that way. In 1940 I lived in a house in Miami, FL, USA, that had solar water heating. The hot water tank was on the roof peak disguised as a chimney. The solar heating coils were below the tank. It had a natural circulation system. The hot water leaving the coils, being less dense than the colder water flowing into the coils, naturally flowed up into the tank.
No propylene glycol, no pumps, just hot water, even in the morning (at 26 degrees North latitude).
“Actually the big problem is that the WEST cannot compete with the solar products coming out of China… Nothing else. If China sells panels for 1/2 your cost well your company is hosed.
I thought you guys were all for freemarkets driving the economy.”
China is very good with basic manufacturing. I was present during the entire time that the American computer industry was hollowed out and shipped to Taiwan, and then again a decade later shipped from Taiwan to China. Despite that, both Taiwan and the US fared quite well by moving “upstream.” Outsourcing the dirtiest, most labor intensive part of your operations makes sense. Solyndra would be in business today if they had put their mfg in China to begin with, but then they would never have attracted all that tempting government money.
Free markets work. Always have, always will. It’s crony capitalism that doesn’t work because it interferes with the free market.
What happens when all of the cracked and old solar panels need to be taken out? Who and how will the toxics be dealt with? Will we by then have extremely strict rules & regs which turn solar panels into the equivalent of asbestos?
Toxins like: silicon tetrachloride, cadmium, selenium and sulfur hexafluoride
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/01/14/danger-solar-panels-can-be-hazardous-to-your-health/
California charges an up front fee when people buy computer monitors, in order to pay for the future recycling of said monitor. If we added these fees onto solar panels just how much LESS cost effective would they be?
Photovoltaic efficiency is crap and has always been crap.
I think lab efficiencies are only about 20% at best.
When they reach 50% or better it might be quasi viable. Until then it is a giant sucking sound.
Direct gain systems such as passive and DHW are much better but real efficiencies are only realized when the building is designed that way to begin with. Bolt on contraptions don’t really work too well.
WRT BP, the subsidies must be drying up.
rwct says:
December 21, 2011 at 12:16 pm
“[…] Look for Gore to threaten to sit on the Board of Directors,including the CEO. I mean that literally!”
Ugh! Pardon me while I try to scrape my eyeballs out with a piece of broken glass (unless you have a better way to erase that imagery).
That would be my conclusion also. I would also add, that the economic crisis in Europe and other world locations will see more subsidies slashed.
I guess they didn’t get DocWat’s memo.
First Solar flaring out. From $175 to under $40 per share – down 70% this year. Someone is losing money and I bet it isn’t BP. The top story is “Will First Solar see single digits”.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/quote/nasdaq/first-solar/fslr/charts
the china made solar pannels will not stand up to a large hail storm alas you only get what you pay for
Harvey says:
December 21, 2011 at 10:57 am
Actually the big problem is that the WEST cannot compete with the solar products coming out of China… Nothing else. If China sells panels for 1/2 your cost well your company is hosed.
I thought you guys were all for freemarkets driving the economy.
This is nothing to do with competition. China universally produces inexpensive goods. The only trouble is, that they are not inexpensive. They are cheap. And people like a perceived deal, so the unload their wallets in droves, but the shoddy products stop working. No warranty to be found. But too late, the economic engine has started, and the funds have been transferred. The Chinese model is just as subsidized as the Western variety. So, your snipe has no grounds, Harvey. No free market anywhere to be seen.
In addition, I suspect something like ‘ThoricEnergy Plc, wholly owned subsidiary of British Petroleum’ is already sprouting its wings. Can you not feel the wind?
‘Big oil’ is not stupid.
Environmentalists clearly are.