As American firms pulled back from solar power, other countries picked up the slack. In the 1990s, Germany subsidized solar technology from both sides—paying companies to make panels and paying consumers to buy them.31 The solar market took off. Between 2001 and 2011, German employment in the industry surged alongside rooftop solar installations.32 If the US invented solar energy in the 1950s, and Germany made it a market in the 1990s, China made solar energy cheap in the 2000s.33 Without sufficient oil and gas resources to power a billion-person economy, China has had existential motivation
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