Originally Posted by jammaiora (Post 2014681)

I was amused by your "story" but not quite sure of its' purpose. One thing I concluded was that Tennessee made a bad business decision, which doesn't surprise me. Secondly, if you think your "story" justifies staying with fossil fuels, it doesn't. Thirdly, in regard to recycling solar panels, it will be developed gradually over time. "Nice" try but no "cigar"!

Originally Posted by Number 10 GI (Post 2014741)

There was no bad decision made by Tennessee, Hemlock Semiconductor made the mistake. Hemlock lost their incentives when they failed to live up to their contract with the state.
I'm not trying to justifying the continued use of fossil fuels, I want to know the net gain if any from solar panels. How much energy will a solar panel generate vs the amount of energy required to produce the panels. And how much energy will be required to recycle the worn out panels. Why don't we hear about that? It would be a great selling point to show there actually is a net gain. Is there a real gain?

Originally Posted by GrumpyOldMan (Post 2014743)

WE do hear about it, apparently you don't. I do not know why you don't, but here is your answer:

For those that don't like to read articles, I included a summary chart shopping the FULL LIFECYCLE emissions of various energy sources, please note that Solar lifecycle emissions is about 1/2 to 1/10 that of fossil fuel.


https://www.world-nuclear.org/upload..._lifecycle.pdf

Originally Posted by GrumpyOldMan (Post 2014682)

I got it, so, don't do anything until you can do everything.

Originally Posted by Number 10 GI (Post 2014764)

I don't see correlation between green house gasses and energy required to produce solar panels. How much energy do they generate over the amount of energy expended to create them. If I make a product that costs me $10 to build and I can only sell it for $10 there is no gain.

Originally Posted by JMintzer (Post 2014776)

No, it's more of a "look before you leap" analogy...

Originally Posted by Number 10 GI (Post 2014469)

Apparently it makes you feel good to ignore all the fossil fuels and pollution generated by it that is required to produce the silicon to make the solar panes.
Most of the electric power in Europe is generated by nuclear energy so if that is the dust we are behind, I agree, we haven't built a nuclear powered electric generation plant in years.
My brother-in-law is German and pointed out to me that Germans bought big time into the solar panel hype and windmill electric generation. Neither one has lived up to the grandiose promises of the hucksters selling the idea.

Originally Posted by Number 10 GI (Post 2014418)

The solar panel isn't as "Green" as it's proponents want you to believe. I used to work as an Industrial Research Analyst in the Industrial Research Division for the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development. The purpose of the Department was to attract new industry to the state and to help existing businesses to expand their operations.

Hemlock Semiconductor selected Clarksville, TN as their site for a silicon plant to produce silicon for solar panels. My division was given a list of raw materials needed in the manufacturing process and we were to locate sources for the materials.

Silica sand with a very high purity level is the main ingredient. That kind of sand is hard to find, there are huge deposits of sand in nearly every state but silica sand of that purity level is scarce. To get the sand it has to be extracted from the ground using DIESEL fueled earth moving equipment. Because of the scarcity of high purity silica most of the sources were many miles from the proposed silicon plant. That sand had to be transported to the plant using DIESEL powered trucks.

The next lower raw material was charcoal made from HARDWOOD, not sawmill leavings. Charcoal is made by burning the hardwood down to briquettes. This creates all kinds of smoke pollution and again the sources weren't near to the plant and the charcoal had to be brought in with again, DIESEL powered trucks.

The next raw material was industrial gasses. Luckily the gas generation plant was required to be built on site however the gas plant required a lot of electrical power, which is generated by COAL!
Now once the silicon manufacturing plant has all the necessary ingredients to make silicon all is good except that the process uses copious amounts of electricity all of which is generated by COAL fired plants.

Now it takes a plant to manufacture the solar panel so the processed silicon has to be transported again by a DIESEL powered truck to the plant making the panels which probably uses COAL fired electric generation plants for power. All of these processes produce industrial pollution. Then you have the problem of recycling, if possible, the worn out solar panels.

Now for the irony. Hemlock Semiconductor spent $1.2 Billion, yes Billion, to construct the plant. Due to an over supply of silicon from Asia, Hemlock decided that it wasn't fiscally sound to produce silicon because of the cheap silicon from overseas. They closed the plant and it never manufactured 1 ounce of silicon. The plant was abandoned and everything was sold for scrap.

Originally Posted by Number 10 GI (Post 2014469)

Apparently it makes you feel good to ignore all the fossil fuels and pollution generated by it that is required to produce the silicon to make the solar panes.
Most of the electric power in Europe is generated by nuclear energy so if that is the dust we are behind, I agree, we haven't built a nuclear powered electric generation plant in years.
My brother-in-law is German and pointed out to me that Germans bought big time into the solar panel hype and windmill electric generation. Neither one has lived up to the grandiose promises of the hucksters selling the idea.

Originally Posted by GrumpyOldMan (Post 2014784)

We have been looking for decades.

Seriously, and it has been an uphill push the entire time. If I were paranoid, I would say the fossil fuel industry has a vested interest in disparaging alternate energy sources. Sort of like cigarette commercials saying smoking their brand is good for your cough.

Originally Posted by tsmall22204 (Post 2015076)

So what does your false dissertation of bad business decisions of manufacturers have to do with a home owner installing solar panels and saving money and electricity. You have the glass is half empty approach. One more point... not all power plants use coal.

Originally Posted by JMintzer (Post 2015377)

Sure, but you completely ignore those getting paid to say the "climate sky is falling"...

Originally Posted by EastCoastDawg (Post 2014564)

No sensible person claims that any renewable energy is pollution-free - anything that has to be constructed is bound to cause SOME pollution, but the prize is to make the impact as small as possible.

It is only the naysayers who set up "Pollution-Free" as a claim so that they can knock it down in their arguments. Without that claim, their arguments would be (and are) meaningless.