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Is solar just a stopgap tech? Like, do they still require fossil fuel energy to create, not to mention maintain and rebuild? And I know we’re now strip mining t

Is solar just a stopgap tech? Like, do they still require fossil fuel energy to create, not to mention maintain and rebuild? And I know we’re now strip mining the ocean for battery metals. I don’t yet sense the sustainability in this amid all this economic hand-waving of “it’s getting cheaper”. (forgive my tone, i have a hard time of making sense of the big picture of renewables, hoping to eventually see how it actually fits into a utopic idea of a “closed-loop economy”) I’m reminded here a bit of Ted Chiang’s short story, Exhalation, where the people devise clever ways to try to put air back in the ground without using more than they’re sequestering. I hope our situation is better than that.

Barrin92 6y ago
I'm not sure about the resource costs of solar in particular but the question is a very salient one. Vaclav Smil has a great piece on this. "What I see when I see a wind turbine" "the quest for renewable electricity generation. And yet, although they exploit the wind, which is as free and as green as energy can be, the machines themselves are pure embodiments of fossil fuels. • Large trucks bring steel and other raw materials to the site, earth-moving equipment beats a path to otherwise inaccessible high ground, large cranes erect the structures, and all these machines burn diesel fuel. So do the freight trains and cargo ships that convey the materials needed for the production of cement, steel, and plastics. For a 5-megawatt turbine, the steel alone averages 150 metric tons for the reinforced concrete foundations, 250 metric tons for the rotor hubs and nacelles (which house the gearbox and generator), and 500 metric tons for the towers.[...] For a long time to come—until all energies used to produce wind turbines and photovoltaic cells come from renewable energy sources—modern civilization will remain fundamentally dependent on fossil fuels." http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/15.WINDTURBINE.pdf http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/15.WINDTURBINE.pdf
- lallysingh 6y ago
  Sounds like a bullshit purity test.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    It's not a bullshit purity test at all. It highlights the extremely neglected costs in raw material and non-electrifiable infrastructure that is required to produce materials that are nominally 'green'. In some cases it's questionable if some green technologies actually are a net positive at all. There is a strong 'abundance' bias implicit in articles by people like Ramez Naam, who push so strongly for green energy production because they don't want to consider the very obvious alternative, dematerialisation and reduction of energy consumption. People like Naam still categorically hang onto a growth narrative so they tend to neglect the downsides of the solutions they provide.
    - alextingle 6y ago
      > It highlights the extremely neglected costs in raw material and non-electrifiable infrastructure that is required to produce materials that are nominally 'green'. Ignored by whom? You? In fact, embedded energy is a huge consideration in the evaluation of green technologies.
      - ashtonkem 6y ago
        It’s a depressingly common reality that “nobody has considered” is effectively equivalent to “I haven’t considered” on the internet. The idea that solar panels might not be more efficient than burning coal is not an opinion held by someone who has done any level of research on the subject at all.
    - pfdietz 6y ago
      I think you just don't like that your hairshirt and woe philosophy is not popular or necessary. How about we ignore you and buy ever increasingly cheap and clean products that make our lives better?
    - kanox 6y ago
      > In some cases it's questionable if some green technologies actually are a net positive at all. This is just FUD, unless you actually have numbers that show CO2 emissions are higher over the lifetime of a solar panel compared to a coal power plant. > don't want to consider the very obvious alternative, dematerialisation and reduction of energy consumption. Forcing everybody into poverty is not a viable alternative.
- arthurcolle 6y ago
  This seems a little silly - of course to develop future technologies we need to use existing technologies. Imagine debating using an abacus to develop a computer - "ah but we must remain pure to the hopes, dreams and philosophies of what the computer aspires to be." Yeah, ok. I'll be over here funding wind turbine companies, you can debate the merits of the methodology and strategies of funding green tech with petroleum-based products yourself. Sounds a little boring to me.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    I don't understand your comparison at all. Given that the primary problem that a wind turbine seeks to solve is environmental, the environmental costs in making the turbine have to be considered. There's no relationship to computers here, it's not a question of philosophical purity, but of correct evaluation of the costs and benefits of a technology.
    - avmich 6y ago
      > the environmental costs in making the turbine have to be considered. Of course it is considered, and few short decades ago that was a valid counterargument. Not anymore - and not later, given the pace of development in efficiencies and breadth of applications.
      - Barrin92 6y ago
        The raw material costs of producing and manufacturing windturbines has not been significantly reduced. You still need mostly as much stuff now to make one as you needed years ago, and the same goes for the transport of everything that goes into the turbine, because the energy density of electrical sources isn't high enough to say, power a containership. You can't just wave away legitimate criticism by talking about "rapid innovation" that does not exist, mostly because it runs into physical limits.
        avmich 6y ago
        > The raw material costs of producing and manufacturing windturbines has not been significantly reduced. Perhaps, but we're talking about environmental concerns, not directly economical or material. > You still need mostly as much stuff now to make one as you needed years ago Suppose. > and the same goes for the transport of everything that goes into the turbine, because the energy density of electrical sources isn't high enough to say, power a containership. No, you're wrong here. Majority of pollutions from transport come from cars, and those demonstrated significant improvement over decades. More, there is no physical law forbidding transport ships using green energy sources - be that electrical (yes, batteries), wind (sails) or something else (hydrogen? nuclear?). And in fact we do see more and more examples of transport which runs on green sources - even planes. Yes, batteries have lower energy density than gas. But batteries have enough energy density to be usable, and their characteristics improve lately; that's good enough for practical purposes. Not to mention, of course, theoretical possibility.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  That’s just asking for a chicken and egg problem. You can’t get fully renewable energy production until you can use EV trucks to deliver the windmills, and you can’t get clean EVs until you have windmills to power them. Sure, we currently burn some diesel to setup these windmills, but the alternative is to burn coal. Don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good. Also, who’s the ominous “they” above? Energy companies don’t setup power production out of spite; they setup energy production so we can have AC and TVs. We’re the consumers of all of that electricity, directly or indirectly.
- cycomanic 6y ago
  Well we should ask this for every energy technology and fortunately people have done this. The term for this is energy return on investment (EROI) where solar has between 8.7 and 34 and wind between 10 and 20 (although other literature says 20 to 50). A value 1 means you get as much energy as you invested. So for solar that means you get your energy used for production back in 1 to 4 years. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    And the EROEI has been increasing, since one aspect of driving these technologies down their experience curves is reduction in inputs, including energy, needed to make them.
- woodandsteel 6y ago
  So are you saying that we should abandon renewables, and stick with fossil fuels until a truly green energy technology is invented, sometime in the future? And if that is not what you are saying, then what exactly do you think we should be doing today?
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    Cut down on the energy we expend, minimize the amounts of materials we use, focus on technology that consumes less energy rather than just attempting to make more of it in marginally less dirty fashion and so on. Instead of promoting electrical cars which consume vast amounts of materials and still run on a dirty energy mix cut down on the car reliance altogether, for a trivial example.
    - epistasis 6y ago
      As somebody who advocates a lot for my local government to finally, please please allow people to build housing in ways to merely allow people to choose to drive less, I think you are looking at this all wrong. Even if we went back to early days of energy use, we are burning wood (or worse) and that is going to make for a truly ugly air quality. Nobody wants to use X amount of energy, they actually want to accomplish Y amount of energy services. Current tech has X about four to five times as Y. As we electrify, it enables tech to get X very close to Y. But we also get to use cleaner energy as we electrify. If my government won't even let me reduce Y for those people that want to, then the idea of forcing everybody to drastically reduce Y, and leaving the X factor the same, will be truly disastrously ineffective. I think that in the 1970s, this idea was far more reasonable. But as we have failed to make any progress on reducing the amount of energy services that people want, but we have made tons of progress in reducing the X factor, and in cleaning up energy generation, I no longer see it as a feasible or fruitful path.
    - woodandsteel 6y ago
      >Instead of promoting electrical cars which consume vast amounts of materials and still run on a dirty energy mix >cut down on the car reliance altogether, for a trivial example. I see, so you think people should abandon autos and instead use buses that run on fossil fuels, or trains that run on electricity made from fossil fuels. Forever. And of course let's not forget the fossil fuel that will be used in constructing all those new buses and trains. So it seem like you want us to stay on fossil fuels. And if that is not your plan, then what is?
- kanox 6y ago
  > the machines themselves are pure embodiments of fossil fuels. • Large trucks bring steel and other raw materials to the site, earth-moving equipment beats a path to otherwise inaccessible high ground, large cranes erect the structures, and all these machines burn diesel fuel. So do the freight trains and cargo ships that convey the materials needed for the production of cement, steel, and plastics. For a 5-megawatt turbine, the steel alone averages 150 metric tons for the reinforced concrete foundations, 250 metric tons for the rotor hubs and nacelles (which house the gearbox and generator), and 500 metric tons for the towers. This is FUD. The mass of construction materials pads the quote but is not a useful measure of environmental impact.
- woodandsteel 6y ago
  Vaclav Smil is looking at this all wrong. There are three phases here 1) power is produced by plants that take fossil fuels to build and fossil fuels to run 2) power is produce by plants that take fossil fuels to build and no fossil fuels to run 3) power is produced by plants that were built using renewable energy and run off of it too. Most of the people who focus on phase 2 basically want us to stay on fossil fuels forever, but they don't want to come out and say it.
  - mistermann 6y ago
    > Most of the people who focus on phase 2 basically want us to stay on fossil fuels forever, but they don't want to come out and say it. How do you know this? Serious question.
    - woodandsteel 6y ago
      Because if you leave out the first and third phases, then there is no reason to develop renewables and get off of fossil fuels. And if that was not what they thought, they should say it, but they don't. But let me ask you the question, what is your position on global climate change and renewables? Do you believe global climate change is real, caused at least considerably by human fossil fuel emissions and dangerous? Do you believe we should be replacing fossil fuels with renewables? And what do you think of my three phase analysis?
      - mistermann 6y ago
        > And if that was not what they thought... Oh, so you do realize you are speculating about what other people think then? It wasn't clear in your prior comment. > But let me ask you the question, what is your position on global climate change and renewables? My position is that until we realize that the problem preventing us from moving forward is not a lack of climate science, but rather a lack of psychological/neurological science, and a lack of widespread knowledge of, and acceptance of, that which we already know...including, or maybe even especially, among the intellectually gifted, like many people right here on HN. Because of this, I consider the rest of your comment is moot. Doesn't matter if it's right or wrong, it makes no difference. We have the same conversations here day after day, year after year, with the same self-important tones of intellectual and moral superiority. And for what? Does anything ever change? You can have a ten phase analysis and it doesn't mean shit at the end of the day if you can't get people to agree on a direction to move in. If you cared about the environment as much as you think you do, you'd be willing to listen to what I'm saying. And if you were willing to listen to what I'm saying, you'd be the first person on HN. But I suspect, like all the others, you won't...because this is the nature of an uncontrolled Default Mode Network.
blunte 6y ago
If the manufacturing facility that makes the panels is itself powered by solar, then the true cost is mostly the materials and what it takes to source them. As for batteries, not every dollar application needs metal or chemical batteries. There are other options as low tech as pumping water uphill, heating water, compressing air, etc.
Retric 6y ago
Solar panels can’t use all that much energy and raw materials if the final unsubsidized price is under 2c/kWh.
sephamorr 6y ago
I can't speak about wind (not my expertise), but for solar, the energy payback is about 1-year in operation for current installations, with a predicted 30-year lifespan. Compare this against estimates for the energy cost of bringing gasoline to market which can exceed 30%.
ktal 6y ago
Until there exists 100% clean options for the entire pipeline of resource extraction, transport, assembly, distribution, etc., there will still be fossil fuel involvement in 'clean energy generation'. Can't really make clean energy cleanly unless we have clean energy to make it in the first place. Resource extraction / recycling is a whole other issue of course.
- avmich 6y ago
  We have that technology for decades - for example, Tu-155 flew on hydrogen in 1988 - and we gradually replace existing usage with more and more clean options. Don't worry - we won't turn off pollutions overnight, but will gradually drive them to zero. And then to net negative values, restoring some losses in the environment.
clairity 6y ago
with enough infrastructure, particularly batteries and interconnected smart grids, you could average out solar power generation across the globe and fuel the whole world on solar many times over. 10% of our energy needs come from 440 nuclear power plants worldwide. for comparison, the sun is a nuclear plant 1.3 million times the size of the earth. all life on earth basically runs on solar energy (or a derivative of it).
- avmich 6y ago
  Yes. Nuclear energy proponents sometime seem to forget that solar energy is effectively thermonuclear energy from a big free source reactor - the question isn't in having that reactor, or running it, the question is just in catching energy it radiates. Solar guys become increasingly good at that - together with wind guys, who employ that energy after another free conversion into moving air.
cobookman 6y ago
Almost 50% of residential energy usage is HVAC and Hot Water heaters. I see no reason we couldn't use excess solar during the daytime to heat our hot water heaters, or cool/heat the house. Modern Construction and Water Heaters have great insulation, and its possible to use the `cheap` electricity during peak solar to store as heating/cooling.
- epistasis 6y ago
  Heat pump technology has come an amazing way, as well! Switching to an electric heat pump water heater from my natural gas water heater saves nearly as many emissions per year as stopping 12,000 vehicle miles. And it saves money, though it front loads the cost a tiny bit. We could have a massive economic boom just by retrofitting existing buildings with more efficient and modern technologies.
205guy 6y ago
In the big picture, you could say that fossil fuels are a stopgap technology (with complex manufacturing and lots of parts needing maintenance) until engineers invent(ed) better/cheaper batteries. But the way I prefer to see it is that solar is helping the transition to 100% renewable energy. Another way to see it is that we already have an electric grid, so we are just finding ways to provide electric power cheaper--then the "efficient market" will figure things out. Also, electricity is used directly in manufacturing, for example smelting aluminum, and that is often done with renewable electricity (hydro in the US Pacific Northwest, geothermal in Iceland). Trains in many parts of the world run on electric power, and of course you can charge EVs with solar power or other renewable energy. And I'm sure some ICE cars are manufactured with electric-powered tools that run on solar energy during the day. PS: if you know your tone is off, why not ask in a different tone?
gnramires 6y ago
Virtually all energy on available on Earth is Solar-derived. Plants all use solar power, carbon sources are all ancient stores of solar power. There's enough solar energy for several of our civilizations (4-5 orders of magnitude more, by a napkin calculation). Roughly 1/50,000 of Earth's surface covered in solar panels would suffice. > do they still require fossil fuel energy to create, not to mention maintain and rebuild That's not really particularly relevant. What is crucial is that they produce more energy than they consume. This is an important figure, EROI (Energy Return on Energy invested), which should be >1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment#Photovoltaic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment#Ph... Photovoltaics generally have been well over 1. There are still sustainability challenges with the technology, but I think they're minor (relative to current alternatives and carbon technology).

Barrin92 6y ago

I'm not sure about the resource costs of solar in particular but the question is a very salient one. Vaclav Smil has a great piece on this. "What I see when I see a wind turbine" "the quest for renewable electricity generation. And yet, although they exploit the wind, which is as free and as green as energy can be, the machines themselves are pure embodiments of fossil fuels. • Large trucks bring steel and other raw materials to the site, earth-moving equipment beats a path to otherwise inaccessible high ground, large cranes erect the structures, and all these machines burn diesel fuel. So do the freight trains and cargo ships that convey the materials needed for the production of cement, steel, and plastics. For a 5-megawatt turbine, the steel alone averages 150 metric tons for the reinforced concrete foundations, 250 metric tons for the rotor hubs and nacelles (which house the gearbox and generator), and 500 metric tons for the towers.[...] For a long time to come—until all energies used to produce wind turbines and photovoltaic cells come from renewable energy sources—modern civilization will remain fundamentally dependent on fossil fuels." http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/15.WINDTURBINE.pdf http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/15.WINDTURBINE.pdf

lallysingh 6y ago
Sounds like a bullshit purity test.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  It's not a bullshit purity test at all. It highlights the extremely neglected costs in raw material and non-electrifiable infrastructure that is required to produce materials that are nominally 'green'. In some cases it's questionable if some green technologies actually are a net positive at all. There is a strong 'abundance' bias implicit in articles by people like Ramez Naam, who push so strongly for green energy production because they don't want to consider the very obvious alternative, dematerialisation and reduction of energy consumption. People like Naam still categorically hang onto a growth narrative so they tend to neglect the downsides of the solutions they provide.
  - alextingle 6y ago
    > It highlights the extremely neglected costs in raw material and non-electrifiable infrastructure that is required to produce materials that are nominally 'green'. Ignored by whom? You? In fact, embedded energy is a huge consideration in the evaluation of green technologies.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      It’s a depressingly common reality that “nobody has considered” is effectively equivalent to “I haven’t considered” on the internet. The idea that solar panels might not be more efficient than burning coal is not an opinion held by someone who has done any level of research on the subject at all.
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    I think you just don't like that your hairshirt and woe philosophy is not popular or necessary. How about we ignore you and buy ever increasingly cheap and clean products that make our lives better?
  - kanox 6y ago
    > In some cases it's questionable if some green technologies actually are a net positive at all. This is just FUD, unless you actually have numbers that show CO2 emissions are higher over the lifetime of a solar panel compared to a coal power plant. > don't want to consider the very obvious alternative, dematerialisation and reduction of energy consumption. Forcing everybody into poverty is not a viable alternative.
arthurcolle 6y ago
This seems a little silly - of course to develop future technologies we need to use existing technologies. Imagine debating using an abacus to develop a computer - "ah but we must remain pure to the hopes, dreams and philosophies of what the computer aspires to be." Yeah, ok. I'll be over here funding wind turbine companies, you can debate the merits of the methodology and strategies of funding green tech with petroleum-based products yourself. Sounds a little boring to me.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  I don't understand your comparison at all. Given that the primary problem that a wind turbine seeks to solve is environmental, the environmental costs in making the turbine have to be considered. There's no relationship to computers here, it's not a question of philosophical purity, but of correct evaluation of the costs and benefits of a technology.
  - avmich 6y ago
    > the environmental costs in making the turbine have to be considered. Of course it is considered, and few short decades ago that was a valid counterargument. Not anymore - and not later, given the pace of development in efficiencies and breadth of applications.
    - Barrin92 6y ago
      The raw material costs of producing and manufacturing windturbines has not been significantly reduced. You still need mostly as much stuff now to make one as you needed years ago, and the same goes for the transport of everything that goes into the turbine, because the energy density of electrical sources isn't high enough to say, power a containership. You can't just wave away legitimate criticism by talking about "rapid innovation" that does not exist, mostly because it runs into physical limits.
      - avmich 6y ago
        > The raw material costs of producing and manufacturing windturbines has not been significantly reduced. Perhaps, but we're talking about environmental concerns, not directly economical or material. > You still need mostly as much stuff now to make one as you needed years ago Suppose. > and the same goes for the transport of everything that goes into the turbine, because the energy density of electrical sources isn't high enough to say, power a containership. No, you're wrong here. Majority of pollutions from transport come from cars, and those demonstrated significant improvement over decades. More, there is no physical law forbidding transport ships using green energy sources - be that electrical (yes, batteries), wind (sails) or something else (hydrogen? nuclear?). And in fact we do see more and more examples of transport which runs on green sources - even planes. Yes, batteries have lower energy density than gas. But batteries have enough energy density to be usable, and their characteristics improve lately; that's good enough for practical purposes. Not to mention, of course, theoretical possibility.
ashtonkem 6y ago
That’s just asking for a chicken and egg problem. You can’t get fully renewable energy production until you can use EV trucks to deliver the windmills, and you can’t get clean EVs until you have windmills to power them. Sure, we currently burn some diesel to setup these windmills, but the alternative is to burn coal. Don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good. Also, who’s the ominous “they” above? Energy companies don’t setup power production out of spite; they setup energy production so we can have AC and TVs. We’re the consumers of all of that electricity, directly or indirectly.
cycomanic 6y ago
Well we should ask this for every energy technology and fortunately people have done this. The term for this is energy return on investment (EROI) where solar has between 8.7 and 34 and wind between 10 and 20 (although other literature says 20 to 50). A value 1 means you get as much energy as you invested. So for solar that means you get your energy used for production back in 1 to 4 years. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment
- pfdietz 6y ago
  And the EROEI has been increasing, since one aspect of driving these technologies down their experience curves is reduction in inputs, including energy, needed to make them.
woodandsteel 6y ago
So are you saying that we should abandon renewables, and stick with fossil fuels until a truly green energy technology is invented, sometime in the future? And if that is not what you are saying, then what exactly do you think we should be doing today?
- Barrin92 6y ago
  Cut down on the energy we expend, minimize the amounts of materials we use, focus on technology that consumes less energy rather than just attempting to make more of it in marginally less dirty fashion and so on. Instead of promoting electrical cars which consume vast amounts of materials and still run on a dirty energy mix cut down on the car reliance altogether, for a trivial example.
  - epistasis 6y ago
    As somebody who advocates a lot for my local government to finally, please please allow people to build housing in ways to merely allow people to choose to drive less, I think you are looking at this all wrong. Even if we went back to early days of energy use, we are burning wood (or worse) and that is going to make for a truly ugly air quality. Nobody wants to use X amount of energy, they actually want to accomplish Y amount of energy services. Current tech has X about four to five times as Y. As we electrify, it enables tech to get X very close to Y. But we also get to use cleaner energy as we electrify. If my government won't even let me reduce Y for those people that want to, then the idea of forcing everybody to drastically reduce Y, and leaving the X factor the same, will be truly disastrously ineffective. I think that in the 1970s, this idea was far more reasonable. But as we have failed to make any progress on reducing the amount of energy services that people want, but we have made tons of progress in reducing the X factor, and in cleaning up energy generation, I no longer see it as a feasible or fruitful path.
  - woodandsteel 6y ago
    >Instead of promoting electrical cars which consume vast amounts of materials and still run on a dirty energy mix >cut down on the car reliance altogether, for a trivial example. I see, so you think people should abandon autos and instead use buses that run on fossil fuels, or trains that run on electricity made from fossil fuels. Forever. And of course let's not forget the fossil fuel that will be used in constructing all those new buses and trains. So it seem like you want us to stay on fossil fuels. And if that is not your plan, then what is?
kanox 6y ago
> the machines themselves are pure embodiments of fossil fuels. • Large trucks bring steel and other raw materials to the site, earth-moving equipment beats a path to otherwise inaccessible high ground, large cranes erect the structures, and all these machines burn diesel fuel. So do the freight trains and cargo ships that convey the materials needed for the production of cement, steel, and plastics. For a 5-megawatt turbine, the steel alone averages 150 metric tons for the reinforced concrete foundations, 250 metric tons for the rotor hubs and nacelles (which house the gearbox and generator), and 500 metric tons for the towers. This is FUD. The mass of construction materials pads the quote but is not a useful measure of environmental impact.
woodandsteel 6y ago
Vaclav Smil is looking at this all wrong. There are three phases here 1) power is produced by plants that take fossil fuels to build and fossil fuels to run 2) power is produce by plants that take fossil fuels to build and no fossil fuels to run 3) power is produced by plants that were built using renewable energy and run off of it too. Most of the people who focus on phase 2 basically want us to stay on fossil fuels forever, but they don't want to come out and say it.
- mistermann 6y ago
  > Most of the people who focus on phase 2 basically want us to stay on fossil fuels forever, but they don't want to come out and say it. How do you know this? Serious question.
  - woodandsteel 6y ago
    Because if you leave out the first and third phases, then there is no reason to develop renewables and get off of fossil fuels. And if that was not what they thought, they should say it, but they don't. But let me ask you the question, what is your position on global climate change and renewables? Do you believe global climate change is real, caused at least considerably by human fossil fuel emissions and dangerous? Do you believe we should be replacing fossil fuels with renewables? And what do you think of my three phase analysis?
    - mistermann 6y ago
      > And if that was not what they thought... Oh, so you do realize you are speculating about what other people think then? It wasn't clear in your prior comment. > But let me ask you the question, what is your position on global climate change and renewables? My position is that until we realize that the problem preventing us from moving forward is not a lack of climate science, but rather a lack of psychological/neurological science, and a lack of widespread knowledge of, and acceptance of, that which we already know...including, or maybe even especially, among the intellectually gifted, like many people right here on HN. Because of this, I consider the rest of your comment is moot. Doesn't matter if it's right or wrong, it makes no difference. We have the same conversations here day after day, year after year, with the same self-important tones of intellectual and moral superiority. And for what? Does anything ever change? You can have a ten phase analysis and it doesn't mean shit at the end of the day if you can't get people to agree on a direction to move in. If you cared about the environment as much as you think you do, you'd be willing to listen to what I'm saying. And if you were willing to listen to what I'm saying, you'd be the first person on HN. But I suspect, like all the others, you won't...because this is the nature of an uncontrolled Default Mode Network.

blunte 6y ago

If the manufacturing facility that makes the panels is itself powered by solar, then the true cost is mostly the materials and what it takes to source them. As for batteries, not every dollar application needs metal or chemical batteries. There are other options as low tech as pumping water uphill, heating water, compressing air, etc.

Retric 6y ago

Solar panels can’t use all that much energy and raw materials if the final unsubsidized price is under 2c/kWh.

sephamorr 6y ago

I can't speak about wind (not my expertise), but for solar, the energy payback is about 1-year in operation for current installations, with a predicted 30-year lifespan. Compare this against estimates for the energy cost of bringing gasoline to market which can exceed 30%.

ktal 6y ago

Until there exists 100% clean options for the entire pipeline of resource extraction, transport, assembly, distribution, etc., there will still be fossil fuel involvement in 'clean energy generation'. Can't really make clean energy cleanly unless we have clean energy to make it in the first place. Resource extraction / recycling is a whole other issue of course.

avmich 6y ago
We have that technology for decades - for example, Tu-155 flew on hydrogen in 1988 - and we gradually replace existing usage with more and more clean options. Don't worry - we won't turn off pollutions overnight, but will gradually drive them to zero. And then to net negative values, restoring some losses in the environment.

clairity 6y ago

with enough infrastructure, particularly batteries and interconnected smart grids, you could average out solar power generation across the globe and fuel the whole world on solar many times over. 10% of our energy needs come from 440 nuclear power plants worldwide. for comparison, the sun is a nuclear plant 1.3 million times the size of the earth. all life on earth basically runs on solar energy (or a derivative of it).

avmich 6y ago
Yes. Nuclear energy proponents sometime seem to forget that solar energy is effectively thermonuclear energy from a big free source reactor - the question isn't in having that reactor, or running it, the question is just in catching energy it radiates. Solar guys become increasingly good at that - together with wind guys, who employ that energy after another free conversion into moving air.

cobookman 6y ago

Almost 50% of residential energy usage is HVAC and Hot Water heaters. I see no reason we couldn't use excess solar during the daytime to heat our hot water heaters, or cool/heat the house. Modern Construction and Water Heaters have great insulation, and its possible to use the `cheap` electricity during peak solar to store as heating/cooling.

epistasis 6y ago
Heat pump technology has come an amazing way, as well! Switching to an electric heat pump water heater from my natural gas water heater saves nearly as many emissions per year as stopping 12,000 vehicle miles. And it saves money, though it front loads the cost a tiny bit. We could have a massive economic boom just by retrofitting existing buildings with more efficient and modern technologies.

205guy 6y ago

In the big picture, you could say that fossil fuels are a stopgap technology (with complex manufacturing and lots of parts needing maintenance) until engineers invent(ed) better/cheaper batteries. But the way I prefer to see it is that solar is helping the transition to 100% renewable energy. Another way to see it is that we already have an electric grid, so we are just finding ways to provide electric power cheaper--then the "efficient market" will figure things out. Also, electricity is used directly in manufacturing, for example smelting aluminum, and that is often done with renewable electricity (hydro in the US Pacific Northwest, geothermal in Iceland). Trains in many parts of the world run on electric power, and of course you can charge EVs with solar power or other renewable energy. And I'm sure some ICE cars are manufactured with electric-powered tools that run on solar energy during the day. PS: if you know your tone is off, why not ask in a different tone?

gnramires 6y ago

Virtually all energy on available on Earth is Solar-derived. Plants all use solar power, carbon sources are all ancient stores of solar power. There's enough solar energy for several of our civilizations (4-5 orders of magnitude more, by a napkin calculation). Roughly 1/50,000 of Earth's surface covered in solar panels would suffice. > do they still require fossil fuel energy to create, not to mention maintain and rebuild That's not really particularly relevant. What is crucial is that they produce more energy than they consume. This is an important figure, EROI (Energy Return on Energy invested), which should be >1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment#Photovoltaic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment#Ph... Photovoltaics generally have been well over 1. There are still sustainability challenges with the technology, but I think they're minor (relative to current alternatives and carbon technology).