It's even sillier than that because "energy costs to produce energy" is a cycle. Suppose it emits 80 tons of CO2 to produce a given amount of solar when 80% of

It's even sillier than that because "energy costs to produce energy" is a cycle. Suppose it emits 80 tons of CO2 to produce a given amount of solar when 80% of the power to build the solar farm comes from coal. Okay, but now you have solar farms generating 15% of your energy, so the next one only takes 65 tons of CO2 for the same amount of solar. Pretty obvious what happens when you stop burning fossil fuels entirely.