https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/solar-panels-another-exercise-in
I believe it’s high time that we put to rest the myth that solar panels are “sustainable”, “green” and “renewable” once and for all.
I don't perceive him that way, though he tends to deal with absolute statements which are not always warranted. In general it's an attempt to publicize while others think it's hopeless . If the style annoys you, try Tim Murphy https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m
nail on the head. "the analyses are flawed and ill show you why!" doesnt do any analysis or dispute of methods. in fact going into even less detail in describing the costs of the process than essentially any analysis being vaguely critiqued. waste of time.
Yeah I was just wondering, sure I can accept that only coal or hydrogen can be used for those kinds of temperature.
So let's say we use coal to stoke a furnace for solar panels vs using the same coal for directly generating power. Are they saying the coal isn't leveraged much better by using it to make solar panels?
Like, that's what they're saying, because they say it's like a storage medium. So I call bs on that.
Further, they mention that switching to hydrogen is senseless. But why? Here in the nl they use old gas pipelines to pipe hydrogen in from offshore wind farms, and they have good engineers here.
OK that leaves the materials. I can't say much about that. But I am skeptical due to the other claims that just seem plain incorrect to me.
hydrogen for ice and broadly for a power plant is unlikely to be particularly feasible for some annoying engineering problems and because we just need hydrogen for other stuff (farming mostly).
the problem in their analysis is itentirely lacks context. they never use any numbers to illustrate that this is unsustainable, just as a spooky ambiguity when convenient to the very very silly point. here is an example of the questions they should have asked themselves:
"aluminum uses several kWh per kg!", ok, how many kg of al per panel? how many kwh will a panel produce per kg of al in its lifetime? is that amount not only more, but sustainably more? (the answers generally are: a bit, a lot, yes). this is what those "critiqued" analyses are doing, and much more.
You're still stuck at a shallow ERoEI level of analysis. All that gives you is a trend, assuming you're consistent about the system cut-off.
Just follow the entire production of aluminium starting with mining, transport and processing of bauxite. Including their supply chains. Now do the the same for quartz sand for tempered floatglass. Now the same for silicon. Now the same for copper, polymers, power electronics. Down to the road and the trucks they run on.
And then realize you have to power every single technical process in the entire world on top of that. Does that now ring the bell? Probably not, empirically. I have yet to see a single person to get it after an explanation. Most figure it out on their own, or not at all.
"you're still stuck on eroei
you need to describes the initial steps of eroei"
and dont geteme wrong, there are other things to consider than eroei, but solar is generally worth it in those contexts as well. things like mining issues, ecosystem damage, carbon costs, etc. of course those were not what were being looked at in the article, just someone's first attempt at eroei from first principles without understanding what they were critiquing.
As a fossil extender solar PV and wind is definitely worth it. It is empirically possible to power some sort of society indefinitely with renewable power alone, like for instance Japan during the Edo period, or to do slightly better.
Just not this sort of society. And almost nobody is ready to discuss what that implies.
When looking at an isolated aspect of the argument you're missing the whole complex. You can certainly produce hydrogen from solar photovoltaics (albeit expensively, some 6 EUR/kg rather than 1 EUR/kg) and use the existing natural gas infrastructure for storage and distribution. Hydrogen can run furnaces. But this isn't at all what the author is arguing.