Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Martin; According to the Guardian, silicon sourced from suspected slave labour in Xinjiang was used to manufacture solar panels in 40% of Britain’s solar farms.
Revealed: UK solar projects using panels from firms linked to Xinjiang forced labour
Investigation finds up to 40% of UK solar farms were built using panels from leading Chinese companies
Jillian Ambrose and Jasper Jolly
Mon 26 Apr 2021 02.00 AESTSolar projects commissioned by the Ministry of Defence, the government’s Coal Authority, United Utilities and some of the UK’s biggest renewable energy developers are using panels made by Chinese solar companies accused of exploiting forced labour camps in Xinjiang province, a Guardian investigation has found.
Confidential industry data suggests that up to 40% of the UK’s solar farms were built using panels manufactured by China’s biggest solar panel companies, including Jinko Solar, JA Solar and Trina Solar.
These firms have been named in a recent report on the internment of more than 1 million men and women from the Muslim Uyghur community, in what UK MPs on Thursday voted to describe as genocide.
Companies with factories or major suppliers in Xinjiang produce about a third of the polysilicon material used to make the world’s solar panels, according to a detailed report by the US consultancy Horizon Advisory. China is the world leader in polysilicon production.
The report found that Chinese solar companies had ties to indicators of forced labour in Xinjiang, where Uyghur are interned, via this polysilicon production.
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Chris Hewett, chief executive of Solar Energy UK, a lobby group, said: “This is a matter that UK solar energy industry members are treating with the utmost seriousness.” He said making global supply chains “as transparent and sustainable as possible” brought a “significant degree of complexity”.
Hewett said the UK solar industry was working with international trade bodies to develop a “traceability protocol” to safeguard the global supply chain from human rights abuses.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/23/revealed-uk-solar-projects-using-panels-from-firms-linked-to-xinjiang-forced-labour
I’m sure the USA is in a similar situation – the allegedly tainted companies which supplied solar panels to Britain also supply solar panels to the USA.
From opium to renewable energy components….Who is the addict now?
History of opium in China – Wikipedia
I strongly suspect the appalling events in the Opium wars are how China justify their apparent lack of scruples dealing with the West.
I had this conversation with a Chinese friend once. The Chinese had been brutally mistreated by the West, then were mistreated again when the Japanese invaded. They supported the CCP because they wanted a strong government which would never allow such things to happen again, but by prizing strength above all other things they created their own monster to prey on the Chinese people.
Regardless of what problems the CCP causes for the West, the first and foremost victims of the CCP are the Chinese people.
But, But, they’re green slave jobs.
The guard towers and high fences are designed to protect workers from COVID19 derived from imported frozen seafood. /sarc
The econazis are not going to care about what their cousins in China are doing to people, they hate people too. But watch their heads explode when they find out it takes more coal than silicon to make a solar panel!
ROFLMAO!! really stuffs up the virtue signalling “exceptionals” doesn’t it?
word about RE slowly getting out to them too
going to be very hard to justify themselves…but Im sure someone can/will do the mind twisting needed to make it all nice clean green and “special” again