#129 – Solar Panels & Poland

Good morning everyone,

Hope you’re having a great week!

Let’s jump in.

read online on my website 

read time 3 minutes 

#129 at a Glance:

• Quote: Getting cut-through with your messaging.

• Podcast: How SB Mowing gained 16M followers in 2 years.

• Deep Dive: Australia’s hidden solar crisis.

• Article: Three Buckets of Asymmetry by Trader Ferg.

• Tweet: Poland’s population crisis.

Quote I’ve been thinking about:

Everyone is so wrapped up in their own world.

Cut-through requires repetition and consistency…

And then infinitely more of it.

Podcast I listened to:

How SB Mowing Gained 16M Followers in 2 Years

After last week’s newsletter where I broke down my new favourite business model, I tuned into a podcast starring SB Mowing.

SB Mowing is probably the gold standard of the content-driven service business model in action. His lawn care and pressure washing videos have generated billions of views online, gaining over 16 million followers across all platforms.

In this episode, Spencer is quizzed on his rise to social media success over just two short years, and how he has built a thriving content machine off the back of it.

If you found last week’s breakdown interesting, this pod is an awesome continuation.

Watch now on YouTube.

[Duration: 48 minutes]

Deep Dive:

Australia’s Hidden Solar Crisis 

With the uni exam season in full swing, I spent most of last week locked away in my room digging into the weeds of a huge topic for an energy law assignment: the end-of-life management of solar panels.

Bear with me now.

This is actually a really pressing issue facing Australia right now and to-date, it has received very little media attention.

I’ll cut out all of the boring legal bits and get you up to speed with >50 hours of research in ~90 seconds.

The issue

Australia has the highest solar panel installation rate per capita in the world. We installed panels everywhere, but never really planned for what happens when they’re no longer functional.

Solar panels have a typical lifespan of 20–30 years, which means the first big wave of retired systems from the 2000s is hitting right now.

Recycling exists, but it’s 6x more expensive than landfill, so almost no one does it.

So, solar is ‘clean’ on rooftops but becomes toxic waste when dumped underground.

Renewable and ‘net zero’ on the front-end, environmentally destructive on the backend.

The numbers

• 1 in 3 Australian homes host solar panel systems

• 91,000 tonnes worth of retired panels is expected by 2030 in Australia (up from only 3,500 tonnes in 2019)

• 90% of retired panels are discarded in landfill

• Recycling costs 6x more than dumping

The context

This has largely been caused by regulatory myopia; short-sightedness by legislators who have flooded the domestic electricity market with subsidies and rebates to incentivise solar energy, but have largely neglected end-of-life management as a problem for the future.

This masquerades solar as a purely clean form of energy whilst failing to mention the environmental damage caused by the dumping of panels.

Environmental issues aside, this strikes me as poor economic policy. Each time solar panels are discarded in landfill, so are valuable minerals like silicon, copper, and lead which could be recaptured to support a more secure and self-sufficient circular economy here in Australia.

A few places such as the European Union and South Korea have largely solved this issue with progressive and thoughtful policy. But as it currently stands, Australia has:

• No national recycling scheme with very little recycling infrastructure

• No targets

• No penalties

• One state (Victoria) who pioneered legislation by banning landfill, which only led to stockpiling and the exportation of decommissioned panels both interstate and overseas

What are your thoughts?

If you’re interested in reading the full write-up, feel free to hit reply and I’ll send it your way.

Article I read:

Three Buckets of Asymmetry by Trader Ferg

A fantastic article by a brilliant writer in the world of investing: Trader Ferg.

He breaks down the three pockets of the market where he is experiencing (and expecting) the greatest returns over the next months and years:

• Precious Metals/Debasement Trade (Gold, platinum, rhodium and associated miners).

• Bottlenecks/supply constraints (Uranium, tin, oil, coal and derivatives in miners, producers, services, rigs, OSVs etc).

• Asian Boom (Chinese tech, small cap Asian equities).

Really digestible breakdown of the current investment landscape.

Check out the full article here.

Tweet I liked:

Poland’s Population Crisis

Genuine question:

Does anyone know of a country who has managed to have low immigration, rising population, and GDP growth?

I’d love to study it.

Thanks for reading! Grateful for your support.

Stay hungry, stay humble, stay curious. ⚡

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This goes a long way to helping me reach more people :)

See you in the next one,

Dimi

(P.S. the best ways to get in touch with me are via email or LinkedIn).