Of course. A look at China’s five year plans will tell you they mean business (unlike the US) about COMPLETELY switching to renewables during the 21st century. And as global “demand”, people everywhere are clamoring for PV power at the right price. I would certainly slap a 15 kiliwatt PV array on my house if I could do it for $5,000 or less. There is ENORMOUS pent up global demand. Many of us are sick to death of oil “shocks” from wars of choice or just plain manipulated crises raising oil prices for absolutely no valid reason. We are willing, within reason and affordability, to tell big oil to put their unpredictably priced and expensive oil products and pollutants where the sun doesn’t shine!
One needs to look at this from a historical perspective. How much demand was there for goods shipped on railroads before there were railroad tracks? PV are the “tracks” that need to be laid so we can all “ship” the sun into our appliances. Big oil knows this all too well because that is exactly what Rockefeller maneuvered us into in the early 20th century with oil products. It is a little known fact that Rockefeller funded the temperance group that pushed successfully for Prohibition. Prohibition destroyed the ethanol competiton for big oil so the hitherto refinery waste product (gasoline) could dominate. It was NEVER about drinking ethanol; it was ALWAYS about keeping farmers from competing wit big oil. The biggest “tell” to this conspiracy was the octane rating “problem” that Rockefeller had after ethanol became illegal for fuel. It’s a long and sordid story how high octane (for high compression/more powerful engines for cars and aircraft) was obtained when ethanol became illegal by the horribly poisonous tetra-ethyl lead additive (ethanol 115 versus 95 octane for gasoline).

Guess where the money came from to buy all the electric trolley companies and replaced them with buses in American cities in the early to mid 20th century? And you thought the gasoline powered internal combustion engine was the most “competitive” alternative, didn’t you? That’s what the Norman Rockwell version of American history would have you believe. Well it wasn’t and still isn’t. That is why the disinfo about PV and other renewables is being so heavily funded by big oil.

Big oil is a wounded beast and it is dangerous because it rightly fears death at the hand of renewables. China is looking at the only viable energy sources available if Homo sap is to survive and using capitalist price war tactics to destroy the competition. Good for them.

Full disclosure, I’m long Suntech and Yingli.