Jack of all trades"The up-front energy investment in renewable energy infrastructures has not been visible as a hurdle thus far, as we have had surplus energy to invest (and smartly, at that; if only we had started in earnest earlier!). Against a backdrop of energy decline—which I feel will be the only motivator strong enough to make us serious about a replacement path—we may find ourselves paralyzed by the Trap."
Nebulous Menace (Sandy B.)@jackofalltrades Good news! Even in 2011, it took less than 18 months for a solar panel to generate enough energy to make and install another solar panel and all the associated hardware. (I don't know the energy cost these days, but the financial panel cost has dropped by a factor of 4 and money cost is a very rough approximation of energy cost.)
@nebulousmenace Money cost is a very poor approximation of the material / energy cost, as it doesn't take into account environmental damage or the time it takes for nature to replenish used resources.
Our industrial civilization depends on continuous destruction of nature and exploitation of limited resources.
That's why it's very hard to come up with the real cost of renewables. Their production depends on a global industrial machinery that for the most part still runs on fossil fuels.
@jackofalltrades Most of the financial cost [in 2011] was paying for energy, and there are clear physical improvements in solar panels since then. [I went WAY over 1000 chars. Details available on request.] And the 2011 energy payback time was less than a year; you could double solar every year based on energy cost THEN.
Most of the raw material is still sand.
There are a lot of things that could be problems for our society- phosphorus for fertilizer, cropland salination, microplastics, whatever- but I'm not expert on those. In 2011 solar, specifically, was at 70 GW worldwide (per wikipedia), and in 2022 we broke the 1000-GW mark. The world looks different when solar is 4% of electricity, today [3], than it did when solar was 0.3% of electricity, 2011.I'm going to check what Prof. Murphy's beliefs look like today.
RD@nebulousmenace @jackofalltrades
>Most of the raw material is still sand.<
"Manufacturing solar panels’ silicon requires a handful of energy-intensive, toxic waste-emitting processes.2 First, pure quartz gravel, pure carbon (i.e., Tar Sands’ petroleum coke) and wood are transported to a smelter kept at 3000° Fahrenheit (1649° Celsius) for years at a time. Since smelters can explode if delivery of electricity to them is interrupted, neither solar nor wind (which provide only intermittent power) can fuel a smelter.3 Typically, smelters and refineries are powered by natural gas, coal and/or nuclear power. To produce 20,000 tons of polysilicon, one smelter (of several refineries) consumes enough power as 300,000 homes.4"
https://katiesinger.substack.com/p/do-i-report-what-ive-learned-about
references:
2. Troszak, Thomas, "Why Do We Burn Coal and Trees for Solar Panels?" (2019) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335083312_Why_do_we_burn_coal_and_trees_to_make_solar_panels
3. Troszak, Thomas, “The hidden costs of solar photovoltaic power,” NATO Energy Security Centre of Excellence, No. 16., Nov. 2021. https://www.enseccoe.org/data/public/uploads/2021/11/d1_energy-highlights-no.16.pdf
4. Bruns, Adam, “Wacker Completes Dynamic Trio of Billion-Dollar Projects in Tennessee: ‘Project Bond’ cements the state’s clean energy leadership,” 2009
Do I report what I’ve learned about solar PVs— or live with it, privately?
Years ago, I told an engineer that I want to cause minimal ecological harm. This man knew that I had my own car, refrigerator, washing machine, phone, Internet access and electricity available 24/7. He took a deep breath and explained to me that every manufactured item requires multiple processes from the extractive, energy-guzzling, water-guzzling, toxic waste-emitting global super-factory. He connected my material goods with ecological degradation—the degradation I want reduced.
"... to produce 20,000 tons of silicon." Gee, that sounds like a lot. Is it? Check my math- I often lose three zeros. Roughly 2 grams of silicon per watt [1], 1 ton is roughly 1000 kg or 1 million grams, so 20 billion grams in 20,000 tons of silicon. So, within 50%, 10 GW of solar per year from one smelter. Seven times more solar-per-gram than 2004, which was part of my point.
If we say that 10 GW of solar equals 2 GW of coal[3], and solar lasts 25 years before recycling, how much coal is that solar replacing? Apparently 18000 tons a day [2], 6.5 million tons a year, 164 million tons over 25 years.
Per your source 3: those 20,000 tons of solar require about 30,000 tons of coal and 50,000 tons of wood chips. Putting everything in "kilotons" we're replacing 164,000 kilotons of coal with 30 kilotons of coal and 50 kilotons of wood chips.
I'm comfortable with a bit over 99.9% reduction; are you?
1. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/01/11/polysilicon-costs-have-slid-by-96-per-watt-over-past-two-decades/
2.https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Coal_fired_power_plant
3. V. approximate
@nebulousmenace @jackofalltrades
"If we say that 10 GW of solar equals 2 GW of coal"
You lost me here, can you explain?
@RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades Solar, roughly, is about a 20% capacity factor. So as a simplification 10 GW is "like" 2 GW of power all day every day. There are various pluses and minuses (solar only shows up around 5 hours a day, but they're 5 very valuable hours; actual coal doesn't run all day every day for economic reasons; etc. ) but, as I said, it's a simplification.
@nebulousmenace @jackofalltrades
I see, thanks.
I couldn't quite verify all your calculations, close though, but regardless I don't think the simple comparison you made adequately captures everything involved. To quote from the Troszak sources:
"When estimating the CO2 emissions from the silicon smelting process, several previous authors “by joint agreement”[22] excluded the CO2 emissions from all non-fossil carbon sources (charcoal, wood chips), from power generation, and the transportation of raw material. [22] This illustrates an important issue. The validity of any estimate depends on where the study boundaries are drawn. If the range of inputs is too narrow, the overall environmental impact of a real-world industry may not be adequately documented."
Your numbers as they are (material needed just for smelting of the silicon) don't include fossil fuel use for the many other processes that together make solar tech possible and that is no insignificant factor.
I'm skeptical of a 25 year lifespan. If nothing else, if efficiency continues to improve people will be replacing their panels sooner to take advantage. Anyway, it could take what, 25 years maybe? to swap out most of our infrastructure to solar and then the cycle of extraction starts over.
But I think more to the point that some of us are trying to make here: your example disregards a complex web of irreversible material transformations we continue to impose on the world in order to implement solar and other technologies. Especially if we're talking about replacing major percentages of our energy use with solar, there is just so much more to it than calculating how much coal it replaces.
It will never replace the rainforests consumed to fuel its construction (and replanting with monocrops doesn't replace the lost biodiversity); the lands pillaged and corrupted by extraction (it takes a lot more than silicon to make solar systems, grids, storage); indigenous cultures uprooted and destroyed.
It perpetuates colonialist-based inequalities and exploitation.
If we're talking replacing coal with solar panels and wind but continuing on with business as usual otherwise, what good will it be? Business as usual is converting the world into a plastic wasteland. It is consuming more and more minerals that are rarer and rarer in a growing cycle of extraction and pollution.
I'm not saying we shouldn't do solar. Yes, we could benefit from replacing some coal use with solar. But that is not sufficient in itself, our current business as usual is not sustainable and leaning on "renewable" technologies to prop it up only perpetuates its injustices and the destruction it inflicts.
@RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades
1) The solar industry standard warranty is 80% performance after 25 years, and it looks like actual performance is going to be closer to 90%.
2) I solved the problem I was given. "This is a problem, because look at how much coal and wood is being used!" *looks at how much coal and wood is being used* "Not like that."
3) "To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." You're replacing one well defined problem with at least five badly defined problems.
I'm one guy, working on one corner of one problem: Decarbonizing the electricity grid. Seemed like a place I could make things better [I'm personally like zero for three, but other people seem to be picking up the slack.]
What is the problem you're working on, and what's your corner?
I do realize that it was a little unfair of me to run with your example of "sand" (which btw isn't actually valid, as I understand it simple sand cannot be used but instead high purity quartz is needed, deposits of which are "somewhat scarce") and then extend it to other aspects of the technology. Nevertheless, that is the reality: there is much more to PV infrastructure than "sand" and I started with the point that even the simple sand carried a burden of fossil fuel use.
Anyway, I applaud you for trying to improve things.
As for the problem I'm working on, if you read my pinned introduction toot it will explain a lot about me. The problem I'm most interested in is that of human liberation (which necessarily includes protecting the biosphere and our resources). Working on this problem has helped me understand some essential things about how we got to the predicament we're in and why we persist in our destructive activities.
So we're coming at the issue from different directions. I'm not saying your angle is wrong, but it is limited and detached from broader context. You may think I'm guilty of being tainted with ideology, but I see it more as observation of trends and tendencies, and through this perspective I see that technology under #capitalism is always problematic. I do not see the problem as "how do we meet our energy needs?", I see the problem as "why are we using such insane amounts of energy to do so many insane and self-destructive things?"
In other words, my position is this: if we discovered a miraculous new source of *free*, clean and safe energy today and implemented it immediately but nothing else changed, we would still be on a course of self-destruction and destruction of the biosphere due to all those other problems like the ones you mentioned you are not an expert in. Extraction would still be a problem ecologically, politically and socially, and with unlimited energy to use it would be accelerated along with the process of converting everything in our world to shit.
Conversion to solar power clearly has benefits, but only in the way that treating symptoms can be beneficial. It doesn't address the disease that is the root cause.
I invite you to explore this thread I compiled with high quality academic sources from anthropology, archeology, economics, history, sociology and political philosophy for that broader context on how we got where we are, if you're curious:
RD (@[email protected])
Attached: 1 image HOW DID WE GET HERE? (a thread of threads, quotes, and links) This is a collection of writings and research concerned with how we got where we are today, which is in fact the story of what has been done *to* us, and what has been *taken from us*. By "us" we're talking about "the 99%", "workers", "wage slaves", all non-owners of private property, "the poor", unhoused people, indigenous people, even plenty of people who swear by capitalism and identify as "capitalist" yet have no capital of their own and no serious hope of ever having any worth speaking of. In other words almost everyone except for the very few who have had the power to exploit us and shape our lives to serve their agenda. We're going to examine institutions and concepts that have deeply altered our world at all levels, both our external and internal realities. By "here" we are talking about climate crisis and myriad other environmental catastrophes resulting from hyper-excessive extraction, consumption and waste; a world of rampant inequality, exploitation and oppression, hunger and starvation, genocide and war; a world of fences, walls, gatekeepers, prisons, police, bullshit jobs and criminalized poverty; a world overrun with cars and preventable disease; a world of vanishing biodiversity and blooming fascism; a world where "democracy" results in being led by some of the worst of humanity; a world ruled by an imaginary but all-powerful and single-minded god: Capital. Our inspiration and structural framework for this survey is this quote from "The Prehistory of Private Property", an important work from political philosopher Karl Widerquist and anthropologist Grant S. McCall: "After hundreds of millennia in which all humans had direct access to the commons, it took only a few centuries for enclosure, colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization to cut off the vast majority of people on Earth from direct access to the means of economic production and therefore to rob them of the power to say no. It took only a few generations to convince most people that this situation was natural and inevitable. That false lesson needs to be unlearned." https://widerquist.com/books-3/#2b Also recommended: "Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy" https://widerquist.com/books-3/#4b #capitalism #colonialism #enclosure #PrivateProperty #state #police #inequality #anthropology #environment #ClimateCrisis #economics 1/30
I just saw this article someone posted, looking at this situation from the copper angle.
I respect your ability to evaluate information and do math, and I'd be interested in your take on this, but only if you have the time or care to look at it:
https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/the-copper-conundrum-3b98704602c8
@RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades @breadandcircuses
Realtime review:
1) Any article that starts out talking about how brave and bold the author is for taking on The Man has one strike against it.
2) Aluminum has a few problems, mostly as I understand it at the actual connection points, but the "increased resistance" is generally solved by just making the wires bigger. There are some places you can't do that, I agree.
3) Not to be elitist, but people who say things like "cramp" for "cram" often have other educational problems. I have just guaranteed myself a typo in this post.
4) "reserves"- something I found out about oil is that they don't look for reserves until a few years before they need them. If you have a 6% discount rate and you find the oil 12 years before you need it, you've wasted half the money.
5) Also reserves- there was a recent 20-year bet that prices of commodities would go up and "down" won. We don't tend to run out of things. [1/n]
Realtime review:
1) Any article that starts out talking about how brave and bold the author is for taking on The Man has one strike against it.
2) Aluminum has a few problems, mostly as I understand it at the actual connection points, but the "increased resistance" is generally solved by just making the wires bigger. There are some places you can't do that, I agree.
3) Not to be elitist, but people who say things like "cramp" for "cram" often have other educational problems. I have just guaranteed myself a typo in this post.
4) "reserves"- something I found out about oil is that they don't look for reserves until a few years before they need them. If you have a 6% discount rate and you find the oil 12 years before you need it, you've wasted half the money.
5) Also reserves- there was a recent 20-year bet that prices of commodities would go up and "down" won. We don't tend to run out of things. [1/n]
a fading echo@nebulousmenace @RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades @breadandcircuses
I like people not to make an argument which can be extended to an assertion that
"The finite volume (of the Earth) contains an infinite volume of X"
Peak Oil wasn't when oil ran out. It was when the increasing demand and use outstripped the easy availability.
And that isn't our main problem with oil.
@midgephoto @RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades @breadandcircuses I mostly agree with you, and I can see where my argument looked like "We have an infinite amount of everything." It was written in realtime and edited for the 1000 character limit, which isn't much of a defense but it's all I got.
@nebulousmenace @midgephoto @RD4Anarchy @breadandcircuses Yeah, you get it. If "we don't tend to run out of things" why worry about #climateChange at all? We won't run out of food, water, materials or fossil fuels, so why not just build higher walls on coasts and more AC units?
#Overshoot is the source of the problem, and climate change is just one of many symptoms. Building more solar won't help with depleting fish stock, topsoil erosion, biodiversity loss, etc. and may actually make it worse.