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The problem with solar is that we will have destroyed the environment to create those solar panels. The return on energy invested (RoEI) on solar is less than 1

by m101 3y ago

The problem with solar is that we will have destroyed the environment to create those solar panels. The return on energy invested (RoEI) on solar is less than 10x which, when you're dealing with an energy budget like climate change etc, makes it a non-solution. Nuclear RoEI is more like 100x

matthewdgreen 3y ago
From Wikipedia: "A 2015 review in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews assessed the energy payback time and EROI of a variety of PV module technologies. In this study, which uses an insolation of 1700 kWh/m2/yr and a system lifetime of 30 years, mean harmonized EROIs between 8.7 and 34.2 were found." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment Seems like the lower numbers come from older, obsolete PV technologies. Lots of improvement since even 2015.
- zdragnar 3y ago
  I'm a little skeptical of these numbers. At the area of land we're talking about (and the location of the land), dust (or cleaning), abrasive sand, lightning and hail are all going to be an issue for the panel lifetimes, if not their efficiency. They're mostly not in areas with tornadoes, which is nice, but I think 30 years is pretty optimistic.
xp84 3y ago
Yeah, it's too bad that we make our decisions based on emotion, a problem affecting the "eco" side as well as the "right wing reactionary" side. The "eco" side pushes solar and wind for everything and thinks nuclear plants inevitably explode. The "right wing" side pushes coal exclusively because it's sad that the few thousand coal miners left could lose their jobs. Nobody's weighing these things with fair metrics.
- tstrimple 3y ago
  The "eco" side aren't the ones making decisions about nuclear power investment. That would be the for-profit energy companies. Maybe think a little more about why an executive whose purpose is to generate profit doesn't want to invest *billions* of dollars and *over a decade* of construction time at a minimum and would rather put money into a wind turbine that turns a profit in under a year. The economics of nuclear power makes absolutely no sense. Literally every study into the subject confirms this. If you really want substantial nuclear power, you've got to take capitalism out of the equation. Nationalize the energy sector and remove representative democracy then you can build nuke plants like China.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    Nuclear power plants and coal power plants fundamentally work the same way. Generate heat, make steam, spin turbines, make electricity. Nuclear power plants without passive safety features need extra redundancy on the cooling systems, e.g. you need backup generators. There is no way that should add billions of dollars to the price of the plant. They cost billions of dollars more because competitors (primarily coal and natural gas) lobby for rules that make them cost more on purpose, because they don't want to compete with a technology that should have a similar construction cost and negligible fuel cost. Especially when they're the suppliers of the fuel. Fortunately for them nuclear is scary and then you can lobby not just for safety measures that make sense but also for ones with poor cost benefit ratios that only serve to make the plants uneconomically expensive. Then the coal companies shrug and say the market has decided.
ben_w 3y ago
EROEI is only a problem if we're expecting it to get below 1 (or close enough given all the other systematic losses at the time), which I vaguely remember being one of the concerns with peak oil. Solar can supply about ten times our current needs with 1% of the surface of the Earth, a completely circular system where PV today makes PV tomorrow only has recurring costs of (1/(EROEI+1)) of the total output — x10 EROEI becomes 9% of the lifetime output of a cell being used to make the next cell.

by m101 3y ago

matthewdgreen 3y ago

From Wikipedia: "A 2015 review in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews assessed the energy payback time and EROI of a variety of PV module technologies. In this study, which uses an insolation of 1700 kWh/m2/yr and a system lifetime of 30 years, mean harmonized EROIs between 8.7 and 34.2 were found." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment Seems like the lower numbers come from older, obsolete PV technologies. Lots of improvement since even 2015.

zdragnar 3y ago
I'm a little skeptical of these numbers. At the area of land we're talking about (and the location of the land), dust (or cleaning), abrasive sand, lightning and hail are all going to be an issue for the panel lifetimes, if not their efficiency. They're mostly not in areas with tornadoes, which is nice, but I think 30 years is pretty optimistic.

xp84 3y ago

Yeah, it's too bad that we make our decisions based on emotion, a problem affecting the "eco" side as well as the "right wing reactionary" side. The "eco" side pushes solar and wind for everything and thinks nuclear plants inevitably explode. The "right wing" side pushes coal exclusively because it's sad that the few thousand coal miners left could lose their jobs. Nobody's weighing these things with fair metrics.

tstrimple 3y ago
The "eco" side aren't the ones making decisions about nuclear power investment. That would be the for-profit energy companies. Maybe think a little more about why an executive whose purpose is to generate profit doesn't want to invest *billions* of dollars and *over a decade* of construction time at a minimum and would rather put money into a wind turbine that turns a profit in under a year. The economics of nuclear power makes absolutely no sense. Literally every study into the subject confirms this. If you really want substantial nuclear power, you've got to take capitalism out of the equation. Nationalize the energy sector and remove representative democracy then you can build nuke plants like China.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  Nuclear power plants and coal power plants fundamentally work the same way. Generate heat, make steam, spin turbines, make electricity. Nuclear power plants without passive safety features need extra redundancy on the cooling systems, e.g. you need backup generators. There is no way that should add billions of dollars to the price of the plant. They cost billions of dollars more because competitors (primarily coal and natural gas) lobby for rules that make them cost more on purpose, because they don't want to compete with a technology that should have a similar construction cost and negligible fuel cost. Especially when they're the suppliers of the fuel. Fortunately for them nuclear is scary and then you can lobby not just for safety measures that make sense but also for ones with poor cost benefit ratios that only serve to make the plants uneconomically expensive. Then the coal companies shrug and say the market has decided.

ben_w 3y ago

EROEI is only a problem if we're expecting it to get below 1 (or close enough given all the other systematic losses at the time), which I vaguely remember being one of the concerns with peak oil. Solar can supply about ten times our current needs with 1% of the surface of the Earth, a completely circular system where PV today makes PV tomorrow only has recurring costs of (1/(EROEI+1)) of the total output — x10 EROEI becomes 9% of the lifetime output of a cell being used to make the next cell.