Pettimore Exposes Solar Panels As Environmental Disasters
We plead with Republicans of every stripe to reconsider "All of the above" energy production scenarios; Solar/Wind/Battery are inferior and damaging energy sources
Imagine yourself believing that the only way to insulate civilization from the ravages of extreme weather is to rely on weather energy.
BF Randall
As if weather is both culprit and solution.
The brilliant Canadian, John Lee Pettimore, “not just a miner,” has unleashed his skills on the “Recycle Solar Panels” narrative. We’ll be linking other work by Pettimore below.
“Green Energy” is advocated by Democrats, moderates, and Republicans, and to them I plead that you reconsider any allowance for these terrible energy production systems in the state of Louisiana.
Pettimore:
Solar panels: Turning metallurgical grade silicon into polysilicon creates the very toxic compound silicon tetrachloride. Hydrochloric acid+metallurgical grade silicon= trichlorosilanes. 3-4 tons of toxic silicon tetrachloride for every ton of polysilicon.
Reprocessing equipment costs tens of millions of dollars. So some operations have just thrown away the by-product. When exposed to water, and casually dumped, the silicon tetrachloride releases hydrochloric acid, acidifying the soil and emitting harmful fumes.
A new process being used is thin-film technologies which use cadmium telluride and a more recent competitor, copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS).
But each of these technologies uses compounds containing the toxic heavy metal cadmium, which is both a carcinogen and a genotoxin, meaning that it can cause inheritable mutations.
Solar recycling plants simply remove the valuable silver and copper from the cells and then recycle the contaminated glass and plastic casing by burning them in cement ovens. The process is costly and time-consuming so it’s more convenient to drop the dead panels into landfills.
By 2035, the solar industry could be generating 2.5 tonnes of waste for every tonne of solar panels it installs.
It’ll make a solar trash tsunami.
There’s significant research behind this, too. From the National Post:
The meteoric rise of solar power is set to spark a “tsunami” of unrecyclable trash as consumers trade out their obsolete solar panels for better ones, according to new research out of the University of Calgary.
“Put simply, we can expect a lot more solar panel waste within the next decade than we are prepared for,” wrote a team led by Calgary-based supply chain researcher Serasu Duran in a pre-publication paper.
The study — which attempted to estimated the raw tonnage of solar panels set to hit landfills in coming years — warned that if the solar industry doesn’t get a handle on its trash problem, “we may soon face the dark side of renewable energy.”
While hydroelectricity remains by far Canada’s largest source of renewable energy, solar capacity has skyrocketed in recent years. Driven in large part by government incentives, at the end of 2019 Canada had 3,310 MW of solar panels as compared to just 221 MW in 2010 — an increase of 1,500 per cent. If the sun is shining, all those panels technically have a capacity matching that of Ontario’s Pickering Nuclear Generating Station.
However, solar panels have a short lifespan and are particularly ill-suited for recycling. They contain very few materials worth recovering, and as bulky sheets of glass, they’re expensive to transport to a recycling facility.
Solar panels can’t realistically be recycled and have a lifespan of only about 20 years. They’re a terrible idea, especially at attempting to provide energy at scale, enough for both residential and industrial uses.
Even The Advocate is pointing out some problems, too.
