That is an urban legend and not supported by any evidence. Full solar lifecycle emissions are around an order of magnitude lower than fossil fuels.
Nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, etc are all better than coal and gas. We need to build more, upgrade infrastructure, not limit ourselves to one solution as our energy needs and decarbonization efforts will evolve over time. But the alternative to solar isn’t nuclear its the status quo of gas and coal.
No, and this vision is the problem. Hydro, geothermal, nuclear, are other options that can make sense depending on the context (of course you don't want to start a nuclear program from scratch, but if you already have a nuclear industry and you're in northern Europe, then it makes much more sense than solar).
But sometimes solar is not the alternative to the status quo, that's what I meant. By in many places of the US, solar is actually a viable choice though, and banning it there is as stupid as subsidizing it near the polar circle (something we actually do in Europe…).
> but also convince locals that nuclear energy is a viable alternative when enough people were able to convince the local government that large scale solar projects are harmful to environment.
In Europe the biggest, and by far, source of opposition to nuclear comes from renewable energy proponents, even in countries where it doesn't make sense (especially solar). That's how we got Germany to get rid of their perfectly functional nuclear plants, spending tons of money investing in inferior solutions (for the context), and consuming millions of tons of coal in the meantime. Similarly idiotic to your county banning solar…
This is nonsense. First of all, “fossil fuel” doesn't mean much as depending on the technology involved the CO2 amount per kWh varies a lot (GTCC vs dumb lignite plant, that's more than a 2x ratio). Then, when you're adding a solar panel you can't compare its output to the same amount of energy produced by “fossil fuel”, you must compare it to the energy mix of the country you're deploying it into (to take the most extreme example: if you're adding a solar panel in France, you're basically replacing nuclear with solar, so you're just adding CO2 emissions). Overall, with the very low solar yields we have in most Europe (everywhere but the Mediterranean) and the fact that in many country the electricity mix is multiple time less carbon-heavy than what coal gives you, your “order of magnitude” is gone.
And I'm not even talking about the substitution effect here, where one Euro invested in solar in Europe is one Euro that doesn't get invested in a better decarbonation project (solar being financed elsewhere, wind, geothermal, nuclear), but that's also something to consider when advocating for a technology.
If god wanted us to have infinite energy and resources he would have put a gigantic fusion reactor in the sky. (OH on Twitter)
Is that true for the complete lifetime (which is what matters in the end) of, say, a PV installation in one's home? Or even for the complete PV industry?
[1] https://energy.utexas.edu/news/nuclear-and-wind-power-estima...
Seeing the annual output of a typcial rather small 5kW peak home PV installation in Western Europe or even Denmark, it just seems unlikely that it would not offset whatever emissions it takes during its mining/production/shipment/installation during its lifetime.
I linked to the source in one of my other comments. Also, Finland installed a ton of solar lasr year, so I guess if someone is doing sometjing someone else claims is impossible, it is possible regardless of what people say and believe.
The price doesn't have anything to do with the carbon footprint though…
> Also, Finland installed a ton of solar lasr year, so I guess if someone is doing sometjing someone else claims is impossible, it is possible regardless of what people say and believe.
Sure it is possible to install solar in Finland, if you're a politician and you want to do a PR move it's probably even a good idea, but it's not for producing electricity.
Disclaimer: Obviously, installing PV around the arctic circle is better during summer than winter...
Thanks for this fabulously insightful take. Here's a similar one: “Coal, once burned, has closed to zero CO2 emissions”. I mean, yes, for sure, but that's a bit strange of an analysis isn't it?
> Not by politicians, but by people investing in the projects.
Well, first of all it is also done by politicians. And then “people investing in the project” is also a common sentence when discussing NFTs so I'm not sure how convincing you think it is.
Each euros that goes to solar in Finland and doesn't get to hydro, wind, biomasse or whatever, is wasted. Wasted in terms of energy production, and have a much bigger carbon footprint per kWh, but hey it's trendy (mostly because it makes total sense in California, the cultural center of the Western world).
> Funny, how otherwise reasonable people insist to argue against reality...
Funny indeed.
And regardless of NFTs, people investing in PV, as opposed to me putting one on my roof, expect returns on said investment. These returns come from selling electricity. Of thos equation isn't working, people don't invest. If it does, people invest. And that is proof that solar works out financially. Even in Finland.
Funny as well, how people use the "market" as argument for anything working, only to turn around and totally ignore it if the market confirms something they don't want to believe.
Reality is, Finland becomes a market for solar, believe it or not. That also being the case for utility scale projects, means it is financially viable. Those arw verifiable facts. Now you can choose to ignore them, or not, I don't care. What I care about is HN turning into a olace where people ignore facts and realizy, just to confirm their points. We can do better around here, because if not, there is no point in sticking around here anymore.
You're making a fallacy here, that it's either coal or PV. It's not. In tropical and subtropical places, solar make sense, else where you're better off with anything else that's not fossil. In fact, PV is not even a good substitute for coal, because coal plants can't be turned on and off easily twice a day (unlike gas turbines).
> people investing in PV, as opposed to me putting one on my roof, expect returns on said investment. These returns come from selling electricity. Of thos equation isn't working, people don't invest.
People investing in NFTs is a proof that NFTs make economical sense then? People invest because they believe, no matter if those believes are grounded or not, so using the existence of market as a proof of something working in completely self-referential believes confirmation.
> Funny as well, how people use the "market" as argument for anything working, only to turn around and totally ignore it if the market confirms something they don't want to believe.
Funny to see that people use the market as a justification for things working, when we have plenty of evidences of markets for things that made no economic sense (crypto, NFT, tulips, etc.).
> What I care about is HN turning into a olace where people ignore facts and realizy, just to confirm their points. We can do better around here, because if not, there is no point in sticking around here anymore.
Please be the change you want to see in the world then, and stop drinking cool-aid and using rhetorical fallacy instead of arguments…
Summary: You say PV in Finland isn't feasible. People building PV, and profiting from it, disagree. Those people put their money where their mouth is. Same goes for the Netherlands. I'll stop now, if you want the sky to be red and clouds be purple, sure, belive that... I linked to a comprehensive report on solar in Europe elsewhere, all you do is moving goal posts and repeating false claims...
I think you missed the memo: institutional investors definitely invested in NFTs during the peak fad in 2021.
> Summary: You say PV in Finland isn't feasible.
Nope, I said building PV there is possible, albeit nonsensical. People put their money where their mouth is, and sometime it doesn't make sense and they get burned. If you think markets are always right, I have some tulips to sell you.
And again, as I said at the very beginning of the thread, there's no link between economic performance and CO2 footprint, something can be a very profitable endeavor even if it's completely counter-productive in terms of climate change, or even electricity production.
> I linked to a comprehensive report on solar in Europe elsewhere, all you do is moving goal posts and repeating false claims...
“Please check my gigantic comment history if you care about facts, I promise it's totally related to the current discussion”. Yeah sure.
Funny how you at the same time write in a very confident way (one could even say “arrogant”), and at the same time only respond to very small portions of my messages (“California”, “NFT”), putting the annoying parts under the rug.
We're losing the climate battle by a large margin, but shills like you are in full “this is fine” mode “solar will save us”, this is so depressing…
Like solar? Want to invest in it? Then finance solar panels where it make sense, in the middle East, in India, in Africa, in South America, and stop wasting them in Finland or Canada… Otherwise it's as stupid as Germany that got rid of its perfectly working nuclear plants before spending a decade trying to catch-up in terms of CO2 emissions (it's still has among the most CO2-heavy electricity mix in the EU to date), wasting hundred of billions in the process (while increasing its dependency to Russian gas, which their economy has now been paying a dire price since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine: play stupid games, win stupid price…)
The panels are less efficient when it is hot, so at summer Denmark is the right place. They are even using solar on Svalbard [0] with good results 9 months a year
[0]https://nordregioprojects.org/blog/2019/11/28/archipelago-of...
Panels are less efficient when hot (which is a problem), but they are even less efficient when the sun is low on the horizon, which is the case even in summer in Denmark, and when there are clouds. These a reason why the most efficient plants aren't actually in Denmark but in Arizona…
> with good results 9 months a year
Nothing in your link allows assessing how good the results are supposed to be. The fact that, without any quantitative elements, you assume the results presented here to be “good” tells a lot about your confirmation bias.
This has nothing to to with supply chain, but with the fact that the Nederlands and Seattle aren't especially sunny places…
https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/the-netherlan...
USSR used to grow orange in Siberia too, that a state program can do it doesn't mean it's efficient in any way…
That tells something about your local electricity market though, not about the energy or CO2 emission efficiency.
So there are things that are not just “not perfect” but actually harmful, and you can't just blindly deploy “not perfect” things.
The main reason why people focus on renewable without getting into the details of whether or not it improves thing, is because it gives the impression of addressing the problem without changing the status quo (mass-consumption society, individual cars, disposable packaging, the search for endless growth…)
The western world's energy and resource consumption isn't sustainable, no matter how you get the energy from, and “decarbonation”, like recycling, is just a fallacy that's been invented to avoid addressing this issue.