Posted on 08/01/2021 6:19:55 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Biden administration has approved a massive solar power project in California that will produce enough power to electrify 90,000 homes. That’s the good news. The bad news is that producing the solar panels in China using coal-fired electrical power plants to generate electricity will produce almost as much CO2 as the fossil fuel plants the solar power is supposed to replace.
Manufacturing solar panels is a dirty business. Starting with the raw mineral quartz, the refining process produces a highly toxic substance, silicon tetrachloride, that some manufacturers simply end up dumping. Huge amounts of power and heat must be used to manufacture the photovoltaic cells.
Since most solar cells in the west are manufactured in China, that heat and power are generated by coal-fired electricity. Maybe someone should ask why we’re buying solar cells to save the planet from carbon pollution when the process of making them not only poisons the earth but dumps as much carbon into the atmosphere as energy produced solely by fossil fuels.
Producing a solar panel in China creates around twice as much carbon dioxide as making it in Europe, said Fengqi You, professor of energy systems engineering at Cornell University. In some countries or regions that don’t rely heavily on fossil fuels for electricity generation, such as Norway and France, installing a high-carbon, Chinese-made solar panel might not reduce emissions at all, Mr. You said.
“Yes, we are clean” in the West, said Mr. You. “But then the process of getting these panels from another country—China now, maybe somewhere else later—produces a lot of emissions.”
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
From the Wall Street Journal:
The dilemma is becoming more apparent as world leaders prepare to meet in Glasgow, Scotland, in November to make a new push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Part of that effort involves coaxing China, the world’s largest emitter, to shift away from coal-burning electricity to slash emissions even as the West gorges on Chinese gear from solar panels to lightweight aluminum for electric vehicles. At a July meeting of environment ministers from the Group of 20 leading economies, China and India blocked an agreement to phase out coal-fired electricity.
Finding alternatives won’t be easy. China’s surging and cheaper polysilicon production has harmed U.S. producers, forcing the shutdown of several factories that use power sources with lower carbon emissions than Chinese producers. Wacker Chemie AG , the West’s largest producer of solar-grade polysilicon, pays up to four times as much for power at its factories in Germany compared with Chinese producers in Xinjiang, said company spokesman Christof Bachmair.
Super Green Wind and Solar made by Coal ,LOL
China could use liquified natural gas to generate the electricity to make its solar panels.
Or it could use solar panel electricity to make solar panels.
RE: Or it could use solar panel electricity to make solar panels.
They must have lots of sun that shines everyday in China, huh?
We are destroying, and have destroyed, coal plants with the latest pollution control devices, that were paid for. Why? So we can virtue signal the world!
And, the world is laughing at us.
And even if they do generate net energy it will not be enough ROI for the investors and so the array will be sold and resold multiple times for debt by vulture capitalists like Romney, eventually leading to the last sucker that bought it declaring bankruptcy and shutting down the facility.
Have you looked at a map? Half of China is desert as in eastern and western Mongolia and the Himalayan highlands the have the second largest solar resource in the world after the Sahara. Places in China have not seem rain in 50 years there are places with 320+ days of full sun a year measured in the thousands if square miles. The upper Himalayan region could power the entirety of the world’s energy use with a few percentages of its area same for the Sahara the amount of sunlight striking the planet’s surface everyday in a single a single hour is more than humanity uses in a year there will never be a shortage of sun EVER. The actual numbers are below look up how big the Gobi desert is compared to 43,000 as miles. Hint it’s 500,000+ square miles and the Sahara is larger still either could power the whole world with a few percentages. Transporting all that potential energy is the issue. ammonia synthesis from nitrogen 80% of the earth’s atmosphere and saline water sources for hydrogen via saline electrolysis makes liquid fuel at propane tank pressures. Ammonia is transported around the world in million tonne quantities today so the infrastructure and knowledge is there. Ammonia has more hydrogen by weight than liquid hydrogen at Crum temps and can be burned in conventional Gas turbines with modified combustors or burned in heavy diesels like the size ships use 100 megawatts plus each a number of coal plants are looking at ammonia combustion to refire from coal in their boilers and solid oxide fuel cells can use ammonia directly for fuel. The truth is there is massive solar resources in the deserts it’s only a matter of time before humanity is powered by them. HVDC can send power 3000 miles with only minimal losses as in 10% that puts a good portion of the world inside that range from the world’s deserts all of North America is inside that distance from the desert southwest, the Mexican desert as well. Europe is that close to the Sahara and all of the major Asian cities are that close to the Gobi. Australia has the outback and South America has the Atacama every one of those areas has 300+ days of full sun per year. Let alone the oceans in the doldrums also peak sun days per year.
So, why is China still building coal fired plants like crazy?
Shouldn’t they be making use of what nature has given them in abundance to provide clean solar energy to their country?
You are flat out wrong, produce numbers to show that.
My panels have a 25 year capacity warranty they produce more power than my 4500+ sqft home uses even in August yesterday they made 180kWh I used 72 of that the rest was sold to ERCOT I typically make $400 a month in power sales from my excess. That’s mailbox money which I live mail box money. My panels get sprayed with water once a month of we don’t get at least an inch of rain which we get 4 to 6 inches a month in the wet season and 2 in the dry.
Coal is cheaper when you don’t have an EPA making you scrub the exhaust. US coal plants have to meet clean Air laws which means hundreds of millions in scrubbers. China burns to the sky and has the worse pollution in the planet people actually die from breathing the air at times that would never fly here that’s the difference. We have clean Air they don’t simple as that.
I'm talking about large solar array projects created mainly as a way to generate income via tax write-offs and government grants. Think Solyndra.
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