How Solar Energy Got So Cheap
April 13, 2023
Nice synopsis of photovoltaic solar history.
Below, clip from the Bell Telephone Science Hour production “Our Mr Sun” – 1956.
Climate Denial Crock of the Week
with Peter Sinclair
-
-
-
"The sharpest climate denier debunker on YouTube."
- TreeHugger"@PeterWSinclair is a national treasure." - Brad Johnson, Publisher Hill Heat
Pages
Links
Climate Science Legal Defense Fund
-
Recent Posts
- Complete Series: Farmers Under Attack for Supporting Clean Energy
- Transmission is the Biggest Barrier to Clean Energy
- Not Just the West – Wildfire Smoke Impacting Midwest, East Coast. What are Health Impacts?
- Alps Glaciers Retreat in Shocking Time Lapse
- Climate Walloping Wallets World Wide
- Saudis Cut Oil Production, Gas Prices Could Rise
- Heat Beats Wheat – New Deets are Daunting
- Climate Crisis Animal Vid of the Week: Watering a Thirsty Cobra
- Down the Rabbithole: The Disinformation War on Clean Energy
- IEA: Clean Energy Investment Expanding, but Not Quickly Enough
- Has Florida Learned from Killer Storms?
- Florida’s Seaweed Blob – Now with Added Flesh Eating Bacteria!
- The Weekend Wonk: Former NRC Commissioner – Can Nuclear Solve Climate Change?
- Ukraine’s Trial by Fire Proving – Wind Energy Harder to Knock Out
- Efficiency, Clean Energy Helping Japan Break LNG Addiction
-
Join 8,198 other subscribers
Archives
- June 2023
- May 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- February 2023
- January 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- October 2022
- September 2022
- August 2022
- July 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
Blogroll
- A Few Things Ill Considered
- AGW Observer
- Clear Climate Code
- Climate Change Ireland
- Climate Charts
- Climate Place
- Climate Progress
- Climate Victory
- ClimateSight
- Deep Climate
- Deltoid
- Denial Depot
- From a Glaciers Perspective
- Glimpse Science Network
- James Empty Blog
- Mind of Dan
- More Grumbine Science
- OilPrice.com
- Only In It for the Gold
- Open Mind
- Our Changing Climate
- Planet Experts
- Post Normal Times
- RealClimate
- Rocky Mountain Institute
- Scholars and Rogues
- Shale Gas Bulletin Ireland
- Skeptical Science
- Solar Power Now
- Terra Alert
- The Cost of Energy
- The Way Things Break
- Yale Climate Forum Playlist
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 
April 13, 2023 at 7:53 pm
You can’t replace a coal plant with a solar farm no matter how confidently and stridently Leah Stokes proclaims how cheap it’s gotten! Solar PV is made in China because they have lots of coal plants (polysilicon is a huge energy hog) and cheap Uighur labor to manually crush the quartz.
April 13, 2023 at 10:15 pm
As for the Uighurs, manually crushing quartz is a horrific job, and labor exploitation* is a tough fight. It’s worse that Uighurs are being forced into “volunteer” labor by government policy (as opposed to, say, just taking advantage of economically desperate people to do hellish harvesting work in the US).
_______
*One Chinese polysilicon firm gave up on siting a plant in the US because it was too expensive.
April 14, 2023 at 7:07 am
“You can’t replace a coal plant with a solar farm no matter how confidently and stridently Leah Stokes proclaims how cheap it’s gotten!”
And yet here we are with coal plants being replaced by solar farms…
April 14, 2023 at 10:23 am
They’re being replaced with solar plus gas and the gas is not optional.
April 14, 2023 at 10:31 am
The scientific consensus says you are wrong, Mike. But tell us about how solar doesn’t work at night again. I need to think about that more.
April 13, 2023 at 9:35 pm
Here we go again:
The issue is how long a PV panel (or wind turbine or geothermal plant or NPP) takes to displace the amount of CO2 emitted during its construction (payback time).
As with BEVs charging with greener and greener power over time, generations of solar panels will be made with higher and higher percentage of renewable energy.
In this International Energy Agency report from October 2022 the country with the worst case has a payback time of under 11 months.
https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/solar-pv-manufacturing-emissions-intensity-and-payback-period
April 14, 2023 at 10:35 am
Gotta wonder which country is the best case – under one month.
April 14, 2023 at 10:55 am
Sunshinania, which used to run entirely on burning coal?
April 14, 2023 at 11:16 am
Their flag in purple and has zig-zag lines on it?
April 14, 2023 at 12:12 pm
I’d call it “wine-colored”:
April 14, 2023 at 12:11 pm
IMO the best critic of solar PV is B.F. Randall. He’s a lawyer specializing in environmental law and has been publishing a lot of stuff pro bono on Twitter and Substack:
https://bfrandall.substack.com/p/the-dirty-secret-of-the-photovoltaic
April 14, 2023 at 12:15 pm
The cartoon in the second video shows the scientist refining and re-refining sand. It looks like the big advance made there is prospecting and mining high quality quartz.