> If it emits carbon it isn't green, it really is that simple.
Producing solar emits CO2 over the full lifecycle. Even during the generation and maintenance phase, it’s above zero. There’s no zero until we remove CO2 from the environment.
Personally I’m not sure solar is a viable mass power production. I think it’s just a nice option for remote power production, as in “no one else in x miles” situation where x is an unsigned int.
Technically, the Sun send us orders of magnitude more energy that we will ever need.
So, yes, I agree with you that today, efficiency of solar panels is not enough for really big scale. But results are already impressive and furthermore, we have yet an infinity of optimizations to research to extract more energy from the sun.
In fact, while absolutely not probable in the coming decades Solar could even be one of the « magic solutions » alongside the fusion. Because we know the energy is there, we just don’t get her how to extract it.
You're conflating CO2 from logistics and CO2 from electricity production. Logistics can be entirely converted to electrical in a decade with no special sauce needed.
Reference discusses power generation and plant maintenance. You can argue about words but only the net CO2 matters when you’re looking for a simple answer.
Perfect is the enemy of the good. We need net-0 but if you only have a binary 0-not-0 ideal we’ll leave a lot of intermediate options off the table. A Tesla isn’t net-0 but it’s better than a gas truck.
I’m arguing against oversimplification, because if we want to take that to extremes we have no net-0 options right now. We need to build them. Every KG of CO2 we don’t emit now is one less we need to bury in decades to come. So do a Manhattan Project on emissions but make easily-adopted changes in the near term.
Producing solar emits CO2 over the full lifecycle. Even during the generation and maintenance phase, it’s above zero. There’s no zero until we remove CO2 from the environment.
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56487.pdf
Should we stop using solar until we find the zero-CO2 tech?
Obviously not. And obviously we need net-0 asap, but it’s not “really that simple.”