China to drive cap and trade tax on emissions.

Western powers could not fool their citizens into accepting cap and tax programs because air quality in the US is generally quite nice.  But China?  Well, the citizens are literally under siege from their bad air quality and I guarantee you it is going to start showing up in the life expectancy numbers out of China.  In fact, I suspect that it already has even if China would rather hide the data than talk about it.  The air quality is just that bad.  Is is in fact a threat to China's national security IMO.

So it looks like one of the things that the US has done is to get China to adopt this cap and trade taxation scheme as part of whatever make-nice deal that Obama and Jinping are hatching up.  All I can say is that whatever they decide will be a lot better than world war and so I hope it has legs.  I suspect that once China is doing this Obama will try to use that as leverage to drive it into the US as well.  The result will be higher cost of everything but without these new tax revenues the government will soon have to declare bankruptcy.

I don't know if all this is happening in time to save Yingli Solar but the charts suggest that there is a chance.  If the outcome of these talks is to open US markets to Chinese solar again then Katy bar the door for the remaining Chinese solar plays because they will enjoy a growing market in the US for a long time to come.

Long time readers  know that I have installed 15.3 kW of roof mount solar.  Since I did a good deal of the work myself, the cost was quite reasonable and the whole system is well on its way toward paying itself off in about 6 years.  Of course, buying it with cash and not having to service the debt has cut 2 years off of the break even date.  I'm hoping that solar prices come down even more going forward and this would certainly be the case if US tariffs on Chinese solar were removed.

One more thing.  I have never been a fan of Obama but I have to give him credit for opening relations up with Cuba and for not joining in with the corrupt politicians like John McCain who want to label China a currency manipulator so that they can justify an escalation that will lead to world war.  This latest deescalation meeting between Obama and Jinping is more credit to Obama.  I guess he's trying to do something right to leave something positive as a legacy now that we are down to our last year of him.