Global demand for power was nearly insatiable. In the United States demand for electricity was supposed to increase by 15 to 20 percent by 2025. To meet this demand, utilities needed predictable power sources. In 2014, solar represented just one percent of US electric generation. With fracking and vast supplies of natural gas suddenly available, natural gas and not solar appeared to be the first choice to meet US demand. However, solar costs had come down dramatically and global investments in renewables had been growing.

To seriously contend with natural gas, the costs of solar had to come down further. Solar and wind power required storage, and government subsidies that supported renewables had to become more stable. Hit by one financial crisis after another, European countries had cut back on their generous subsidies. Germany, whose subsidies, after it chose to mothball its nuclear power plants, were the most generous, was less committed. Whenever federal government subsidies to solar or wind energy expired in the United States, Congress was indecisive about whether to continue them, especially after the debacle of Solyndra – a solar-panel producer that borrowed more than $500 million from the US government and filed for Chapter 11 protection in 2011. After the Fukushima disaster, Japan might be a promising market for solar and wind products. Its government approved a feed-in tariff in 2012 of about €0.41 per kWh. Depending of how public policies in various countries evolved, they would have major impacts on solar power's future.

The latest twist in this saga was trade wars. In 2011, SolarWorld, a German company that manufactures solar panels in Oregon and a company to whom Shell divested its solar business, along with seven other firms, unnamed because of fear of Chinese reprisal, targeted China for anti-competitive subsidies and the dumping of solar panels in the United States.