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dick_freebird
chrisnfolsom
When working for an electronics manufacturer in the late 90's when we moved ...
Solar cell emission 23,000x worse than C02
Carolyn Mathas
6/6/2012 10:32 AM EDT
According to a new environmental book that just hit the stands, Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism (University of Nebraska Press, June 2012), solar cells do not offset greenhouse gases or curb fossil fuel use in the U.S. Instead, author Ozzie Zehner, visiting scholar at UC Berkeley, says that the solar industry has grown to become one of the leading emitters of hexafluorethalene (C2F6), nitrogen triflouride (NF3), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6). Zehner states that the three greenhouse gases used by solar cell fabricators make carbon dioxide (CO2) seem harmless.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) rates the global warming potential of hexafluorethalene 12,000 times higher than CO2. It is 100% the result of human creation and survives 10,000 years when released into the atmosphere. The others fare even worse. NF3 is 17,000 more virulent and SF6, over 23,000 times worse.
Amazing. It’s bad enough if these figures are true, but the author’s position is that shifting to energy taxes and other conservation measures will yield better results when compared with solar cells.
My question becomes, given that Cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin film is one of the offenders in photovoltaics, isn’t it used in several other products? According to the U.S. Department of Labor, it’s extremely toxic and commonly found in industrial workplaces. Used in electroplating, the labor department reports several deaths from acute overexposure among welders that welded on cadmium-laden alloys or worked with silver solders. It’s also in paints and in some batteries.
My point is that while these substances and materials are effective for solving one problem, what challenges do they add to the bigger picture? If you’re involved in either use or manufacture, maybe you can set me straight if I’m getting this wrong?
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Mtocher
6/6/2012 3:20 PM EDT
Here is a good reference for those seeking more knowledge on the subject:
http://journalogy.net/Publication/5025870/environmental-impacts-of-crystalline-silicon-photovoltaic-module-production
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Douglas.Butler
6/14/2012 9:55 AM EDT
I remember reading many years ago, when solar cells were much less efficient, that a cell would have to be used in average sunlight for 27 years to generate the energy that was consumed in making it in the first place. I presume that number has gotten much better since. But it would be nice to know what it currently is.
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cmathas
6/14/2012 10:17 AM EDT
It sure would be good to know. Anyone out there? For me, it's one thing to wait--well, not 27 years--but to think that the cells are actually doing more harm boggles the mind.
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RDentonSr
6/14/2012 12:55 PM EDT
So does this mean "wind" is the optimum "green" source of electric power? It only kills birds, not people.
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qaseemali
6/15/2012 1:53 AM EDT
Solar Thermal is also a very good candidate for warm areas like the middle east and/or deserts elsewhere. Some remarkable work is being done in Spain regarding this technology. It certainly is more steady than PV and Greener too.
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chrisnfolsom
12/4/2012 4:57 PM EST
The bird issues were with old technology - the larger, higher, slower rotating towers are safe for birds. Building with lots of windows are deadly though..
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I_B_GREEN
6/18/2012 2:40 PM EDT
I had mentioned this fact about over a year ago here in these discussion forums.
When these plants were in the US IC or solar, we had good gov oversite of the release-containment-re-use of these chemicals.
Or we had just gotten to a point we could.
Then it all shiftede to the wild, wild east
Where the rush to build and produce took over the need to not polute.
The chinese will have created more greenouse gas emmissions in producing PV than all the Co2 reductions will ever have a chance to undo.
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chrisnfolsom
12/4/2012 8:32 PM EST
When working for an electronics manufacturer in the late 90's when we moved manufacturing to Mexico the first thing we did was remove the extended condensation hoods for our cleaning tanks using the US certified CFC solvents to use the solvents still legal in Mexico - that was progress in the wrong direction. I wonder what the laws are in China and other countries we manufacture in.
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I_B_GREEN
6/18/2012 2:42 PM EDT
stop all imports from countries that cananot prove they containment is above 99.9%
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dick_freebird
12/5/2012 4:52 PM EST
You always see these "contains" or "uses" canards
thrown out by people whose agenda it suits, but no
quantitative emissions numbers, and of course the
process gasses could be recaptured in situ if the
manufacturer cared to.
I've worked with flash X-ray machines which are
just "lightning in a bottle" with the bottle full
of SF6. But the bottle stays corked and losses
are nil. Process gasses have to flow, but you
don't see a whole lot of HF, silane, borane being
vented (at least, not in the US, not these last
few decades - but in the old days the industry
sure did stank up some groundwater, dirty little
non-secret). The feedstocks can flow to reclaim.
But that is insufficiently scary to be useful in
promoting whatever the "heck" these people are
after.
It's absurd, by the way, to call an inorganic
compound "virulent".
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