Solar panels are tricky because they rely on certain elements which are rather rare actually. I feel like there needs to be a serious study into whether increased mining/production of solar panels is a net gain or loss. It does feel however than reckoning with climate change will require more on the consumption/behavior side than technology side unfortunately.
The energy flow is a bit similar to the cash flow of a SAAS company: As ROI takes a few years, the start of the rapidly growing industry looks like a net negative, but with the installed capacity constantly growing and efficiency getting better, even the industry as a whole is in the black now.
So I did say production, but my main issue isn't mere production but the mining of materials and that mining's impact on the environment. Also, PVs and rechargable batteries do use some rare earths which also sucks because, well they're rare and may eventually be depleted.
Regardless, thanks for the talk, it's interesting. I think someone told me a while back they did an analysis of the difference between gas electricity plants vs solar and they came away with the realization that the only way gas wins is really due to the financing around it, so something totally due to regs and how society is already used to it. I just am not sure solar is going to be the silver bullet and actual reduction of consumption might be the only way to stave off climate change.
Nearly all current photovoltaic cell production is polysilicon, which does not require any rare elements or any rare-earth elements. There are some PV technologies that use rare elements such as indium and selenium, but they do not use rare-earth elements either; and, in any case, they have been pretty much priced out of the market by falling polysilicon costs. There are many kinds of rechargeable batteries, but none of them, to my knowledge, use rare-earth elements. In particular, the lithium-ion batteries in current large-scale use do not even use any rare elements. (Nickel-cadmium batteries used cadmium, which is about as rare as silver, but not a rare-earth element.)
Finally, rare earth elements are not rare (a dozen of them are each individually more abundant than tin), and there is no danger of depleting them.
These are the factual errors in the first factual sentence of your comment. This level of reliability leads me to believe that you are commenting with no concern for whether your comment is true or false, even without doing a similar level of investigation of the rest of your comment.
I think he was suckered by a deliberate propaganda effort to paint PV as dirty. Shellenberger was spreading that BS, and others picked it up without being sufficiently skeptical.
Absolutely, reduction should aways be the first option. Just like electric cars are still just a band aid for unsustainable urban design. The optimum would be more human-centric cities that reduce most needs for powered mobility. I have the luck to be able to live like that and it's just great. School, daycare, shopping and our workplaces are all within a 2km radius. Thus our household doesn't need any car, but everyone has a nice bike to get around. We literally save hours each day that would otherwise be wasted on mobility.
The currently externalized costs of mining the rare materials will for sure be disastrous, but then again they would also be for other types of energy production. Relative to other types of energy production, I think one can more or less ignore this point (unless there is some polluting process involved that only affects a specific mode of energy production).
> Solar panels are tricky because they rely on certain elements which are rather rare actually
Which elements are you thinking of? The vast majority of PV being made today is silicon. The only rare element used in PV is silver for front contact wires, and that can be substituted for with proper design (copper wires can be used if a diffusion barrier layer of nickel or molybdenum is used to prevent its reaction with silicon.)
