A brewing transatlantic trade spat over the United States’ Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which provides hefty subsidies for people to buy homegrown cars, is overshadowing one of the core efforts to reset the relationship between Brussels and Washington in the post-[…] era. That’s the view of more than a dozen officials with direct knowledge of those discussions, who spoke about the tensions on the condition of anonymity because the matter is sensitive. …
Yet when these officials meet in Washington on December 5, their talks are likely to be hampered by disagreements over American subsidies for electric car production. The U.S. says the subsidies are needed to jumpstart the economy; Brussels says they amount to unfair protectionism.
Trade rift between EU and US grows over green industry and jobs
France says it will lose €8bn as businesses are given incentives to ‘Buy American’
This is a mixed point. The reason the EU might be offended the most countries like Norway loved Teslas and bought them. Now everyone is jumping in the game.
The bigger question is will the EU offer subsidies on EU manufactured EV?
I’d prefer to see that solution.
Then as these companies make EV the main market instead of ICE the subsidies could be reduced or eliminated. It is foolish not subsidize EV. It is hard politically to subsidies EV not made at home. China wants its 400 EV makers to get the subsidies as well, quite sure of that.
Australia last year set itself the goal of being one of the world’s three largest hydrogen exporters over the coming decade… But the Deloitte analysis shows many of the expectations around an Australian hydrogen industry have been dealt a blow by US President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act passed last year…
Deloitte’s analysis suggests the federal government consider a $2-a-kilogram production credit for hydrogen. This is about half the maximum credit available under the Biden administration’s program.
The company argues this lower price reflects Australia’s comparative advantages in some areas, while also keeping a lid on the total budget hit. At $2 a kilogram, the federal government would pump an estimated $15.5 billion into the industry over a decade.
How can you be dominate in the market for H2? Coal, gas, and oil, are pretty much were you find them, but H2 is distributed around the world pretty uniformly.
Not sure, but I think it is based on having lots of energy source potential (both from fossil and renewables) for production and proximity to future Asian markets. There may also be advantages to early movers.
Somehow, the thought of the Aussies burning their abundant coal resources to produce H2, gave me a flashback to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”, and, in particular, the products of Sirius Cybernetics.
Perhaps the same way that Silicon Valley came to dominate the tech industry, or Hollywood came to dominate the entertainment industry, within the United States. Not by having an abundance of a geographically limited natural resource (neither of which is especially relevant for tech or entertainment), but by becoming a concentrated hub of the personnel, equipment, facilities, financial networks, and expertise/experience of that industry.
Or the path that the U.S. is following (at least as suggested by the linked article) - dumping a massive amount of subsidies into the industry, so that while theoretically H2 can be prepared anywhere without advantage, your country’s H2 market rates are cheaper than anyone else’s.
Actually, southern California does have an abundant supply of a limited resource that is very helpful in producing both movies and aircraft: warm, dry, weather, that enables work being done outdoors. No accident that North American, Consolidated, Lockheed, Vultee, Northrup, Douglas, all were formed and grew in southern California. When Ford Motor tried building B-24s in Michigan, the weather was an impediment, and required the construction of a lot of heated hangar space to perform work on aircraft that could be done outdoors in California year 'round.
Bill Boeing got started building aircraft in cold, rainy, Seattle, by accident. His father made a fortune in lumber in Michigan. Bill moved to Seattle to apply his lumber knowledge to the forests in that area, but then got sidetracked.
Yes, before Hollyweird dominated film production. Today, a lot of production takes place outside of southern California, because it is cheaper. The “Stargate SG-1” series was shot around Vancouver. In the supplements in the DVD sets, the actors and production staff talk about the difficulties of shooting there, because it is so cold and wet. Usually, the rain was not heavy enough to show up on camera, but if you really look at the clothes on the actors, they are clearly soaked. But the ease of production staff is not the concern of the beancounters that demand lowest possible production costs.
Then the software tech industry (Silicon Valley). Or any other sector that gets highly concentrated in one or more dominant geographic areas for reasons unrelated to the distribution of a material resources.
Even though you can make hydrogen almost anywhere, that doesn’t necessarily mean that people will make hydrogen almost anywhere. Australia was apparently hoping that they could get a dominant foothold in the industry and establish themselves as a leading exporter of hydrogen, and that industrial policy is now threatened (at least according to those quoted in that article) by the U.S. deciding to put a lot of subsidies into U.S. production of hydrogen.
According to some sources, the growth of the Valley was due to the concentration of aerospace companies in California, which attracted military funding. In the 50s, the largest employer in the Valley was Lockheed.