12 ms·

What about the materials used in the solar panels, in addition to the process used to make them.

by o_s_m 13y ago

pygy_ 13y ago
I was referring to photosynthesis, not solar panels.
dredmorbius 13y ago
Noting that parent was referring to net primary productivity (on which, Jeffrey Dukes, "Burning Buried Sunshine", is very strongly recommended: http://globalecology.stanford.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1.pdf http://globalecology.stanford.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange...), the sustainability of various renewable energy technologies is an open question. But here's the dilemma as I see it: • Modern technological civilization is predicated on abundant cheap (high EROEI) energy sources. Technology follows from, rather than leads to, energy availability, and hence isn't an answer. • For reasons of both depletion (peak oil / gas / coal) and pollution (greenhouse gasses, AGW, mercury and other emissions), continued use of fossil fuels isn't viable. We've already heat peak conventional liquids (oil), and global total peak oil production is likely within 5-15 years. Gas follows shortly after, coal likely by the late 21st / mid 22nd century assuming demand doesn't collapse entirely (which would generally indicate a collapse of civilization). • If you want to continue a technological civilization of some sort, then you've got to find alternative high-grade forms of energy. Likely a mix of electrical generation (highly fungible) and limited liquid or solid fuels production (for transport and storage needs). Capacities to produce both are fairly constrained. • The alternative is ... a non-technological level of civilization. Likely a collapse in both technological levels and population (from famine, disease, war, the usual). Which means that the future of humanity will be relying on solar power -- collected and stored by plants. And be living in a drastically depleted environment in which many ores and mineral resources, as well as water, topsoil, and ecosystems have been hugely depleted. "Rebooting" civilization would be at best very, very difficult. • I like a technological civilization, don't get me wrong. But I don't see it as sustainable. And there's nothing in the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, ecology, or geology which say the Universe owes us our standard of living. Answering your question about solar PV: the economics look difficult, and numerous people who are convinced of peak oil and climate change suggest that they may well not work, see Ted Trainer, John Michael Greer, Charles A.S. Hall, and Gail Tverberg among them: "Renewable Energy: No Solution For Consumer Society" http://www.countercurrents.org/trainer240411.htm http://www.countercurrents.org/trainer240411.htm But that doesn't exactly leave us with good alternatives, and my feeling is that PV or other high-grade solar technologies (solar thermal, Stirling or related engines) are worth pursuing with our remaining fossil fuel reserve (we really should have been pursuing these decades ago). What's your alternative? Enjoy your day.
- pdonis 13y ago
  What's your alternative? Nuclear. I notice you don't mention this at all, unless you mean to include it in "electrical generation", in which case your statement that technological civilization is not sustainable strikes me as far too pessimistic. Even if you only consider nuclear to be a temporary energy source while we develop high-grade solar energy, it still can get us a lot further than our remaining fossil fuels. Also, any evaluation of "sustainability" is fundamentally limited by our inability to predict how our society will change in the future. For example, a sustainability analysis done in the late 19th century, when horses were a primary mode of transportation, would have shown that that mode of transportation was not sustainable--we would have ended up, as the saying goes, knee deep in horses--t. Then the automobile came along. In other words, there's a common confusion (as shown by many posts in this thread) between a specific way of doing things being unsustainable, and our society in general being unsustainable. It's far harder to show the latter than the former, because we can always change our way of doing things.
  - gambiting 13y ago
    Keep in mind that uranium is also a limited resource. Might last us another thousand years,but it will run out eventually. Unless by nuclear you meant fusion power,but we are not quite there yet.
    - pdonis 13y ago
      In a thousand years we'll have fusion power--in fact we'll probably have better sources of energy than fusion (like the ability to tap solar energy much more efficiently than we do now).
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    Nuclear Great! Fission or fusion? What fuel cycle? What reactor design? Is it proven? Experimentally? Prototype? In production? What's the fuel availability look like? How about issues with proliferation, waste disposal, plant accidents, and plant decommissioning? I didn't spell out my alternatives in detail, but yes, nuclear is an option for electrical generation (I suppose you could also run a power loom or stamping gin off of one if you really wanted to). However of the options: • Fusion's not there yet. Tokamak, NIF, or Polywell. Nothing but the shortest experimental possible ignitions yet. Nothing remotely commercializable. Several fuel cycles are fairly constrained. • Uranium/plutonium LWR fission has a pretty critical fuel shortage. 80 years at present usage, 6 if we go 100% nuclear at present energy consumption rates. Scale in anticipated global energy growth rates and it's less than that. Waste, decommissioning, and accident issues are significant. • Breeding uranium or plutonium might extend fuel supplies but creates significant weapons-grade material proliferation concerns. • The TeraPower "nuclear candle" is a nice bridge technology ... if it works, but that only lasts until our existing nuclear waste is consumed (which raises the point: you don't want to be too good at disposal: the stuff might come in handy). • Thorium has a vocal and occasionally demented lobby on the Intarwebs, but even the optimistic Chinese see MSR as 25 years out from commercialization. And I see energy needs coming to a head Real Soon Now -- rather less than 25 years, at any rate. And none of these technologies, nor wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, or tidal power give you liquid fuels, which is what planes, trains, automobiles, trucks, buses, boats, construction equipment, furnaces, generators, back-up power systems, and remote energy applications rely on. Sure, you've got Fischer-Tropsch, the Sabatier reaction, and other solid-to-liquid, gas-to-liquid, and fuel synthesis processes. All of which, scaled to the 100 million barrels of oil consumed daily globally would represent an absolutely massive investment of capital and energy. Conventional crop biofuels, wastestream-to-energy, sewage-to-energy, and advanced algael biofuels all suffer from the challenge that your dealing with net captured flux of around 10 W/meter^2, maybe 100 W/meter^2 for algae, of photosynthetic efficiency. And you've got to capture that on land that's not already producing food you're planning on eating, or ecosystems you're planning on sustaining, you know, the rest of the Earth's biosystems. The 100 quadrillion BTUs the USofA consumes annually corresponds to 29,307 TWh of energy, which at 10W/m^2 and 8 hours of effective insolation (a typical 30% duty cycle) means you're looking at 1,115,186 km^2 ... or a square 1056 km on a side (430,576 square miles, or 656 miles on a side, for the non-metric). Sure, NYC of 1894 had 200,000 horses pumping out, literally, 5 million pounds of horseshit daily (https://ffbsccn.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/superfreakonomics-and-the-parable-of-the-horse-manure-there-is-so-much-i-dont-know/ https://ffbsccn.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/superfreakonomics-a...). And the straight estimates were accurate: keep that up and you'd be buried in the stuff (you already were knee deep in places). Thing is: it's possible for things to get that bad. Ever been to India? Or just seen the opening sequence of Slumdog Millionaire? Because that's how a lot of people live: combing through trash heaps and swimming in shit (not equine, either). And the reason NYC didn't drown in brown is because of this one-time lottery winnings of uncomposted Carboninferous lignan-laced pulp and algae decay which we've been talking about here (if decomposers had evolved slightly faster, we'd be discussing this in a small agrarian village somewhere). Technology, as I said, followed that windfall, it didn't create it (Colonel Drake's oil rig: borrowed from the Chinese who'd been drilling 1000 feet for salt since the year 1000). That rabbit's already been pulled from the hat, and we've been looking for a long time, pretty thoroughly, without finding many more rabbits for, oh, 40 years or so. The automobile didn't "come along", it was pumped from an oil well that's now running dry despite fracking fluids leaking into your water supply. Technology doesn't create entropic gradients, it taps them. And we've got a pretty good idea of what provides useful energy: Moving stuff, falling stuff, blowing stuff, bright light, chemical bonds, and nuclear bonds. And it's mostly the bright light and chemicals that seem to work well for us, higher up it's not sufficiently dense or reliable, lower down and it's too complex. I don't see gradients (flows or stocks) we can tap with the ease and usefulness we have for the past 250 years.

What about the materials used in the solar panels, in addition to the process used to make them.

by o_s_m 13y ago

What about the materials used in the solar panels, in addition to the process used to make them.

pygy_ 13y ago

I was referring to photosynthesis, not solar panels.

dredmorbius 13y ago

Noting that parent was referring to net primary productivity (on which, Jeffrey Dukes, "Burning Buried Sunshine", is very strongly recommended: http://globalecology.stanford.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1.pdf http://globalecology.stanford.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange...), the sustainability of various renewable energy technologies is an open question. But here's the dilemma as I see it: • Modern technological civilization is predicated on abundant cheap (high EROEI) energy sources. Technology follows from, rather than leads to, energy availability, and hence isn't an answer. • For reasons of both depletion (peak oil / gas / coal) and pollution (greenhouse gasses, AGW, mercury and other emissions), continued use of fossil fuels isn't viable. We've already heat peak conventional liquids (oil), and global total peak oil production is likely within 5-15 years. Gas follows shortly after, coal likely by the late 21st / mid 22nd century assuming demand doesn't collapse entirely (which would generally indicate a collapse of civilization). • If you want to continue a technological civilization of some sort, then you've got to find alternative high-grade forms of energy. Likely a mix of electrical generation (highly fungible) and limited liquid or solid fuels production (for transport and storage needs). Capacities to produce both are fairly constrained. • The alternative is ... a non-technological level of civilization. Likely a collapse in both technological levels and population (from famine, disease, war, the usual). Which means that the future of humanity will be relying on solar power -- collected and stored by plants. And be living in a drastically depleted environment in which many ores and mineral resources, as well as water, topsoil, and ecosystems have been hugely depleted. "Rebooting" civilization would be at best very, very difficult. • I like a technological civilization, don't get me wrong. But I don't see it as sustainable. And there's nothing in the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, ecology, or geology which say the Universe owes us our standard of living. Answering your question about solar PV: the economics look difficult, and numerous people who are convinced of peak oil and climate change suggest that they may well not work, see Ted Trainer, John Michael Greer, Charles A.S. Hall, and Gail Tverberg among them: "Renewable Energy: No Solution For Consumer Society" http://www.countercurrents.org/trainer240411.htm http://www.countercurrents.org/trainer240411.htm But that doesn't exactly leave us with good alternatives, and my feeling is that PV or other high-grade solar technologies (solar thermal, Stirling or related engines) are worth pursuing with our remaining fossil fuel reserve (we really should have been pursuing these decades ago). What's your alternative? Enjoy your day.

pdonis 13y ago
What's your alternative? Nuclear. I notice you don't mention this at all, unless you mean to include it in "electrical generation", in which case your statement that technological civilization is not sustainable strikes me as far too pessimistic. Even if you only consider nuclear to be a temporary energy source while we develop high-grade solar energy, it still can get us a lot further than our remaining fossil fuels. Also, any evaluation of "sustainability" is fundamentally limited by our inability to predict how our society will change in the future. For example, a sustainability analysis done in the late 19th century, when horses were a primary mode of transportation, would have shown that that mode of transportation was not sustainable--we would have ended up, as the saying goes, knee deep in horses--t. Then the automobile came along. In other words, there's a common confusion (as shown by many posts in this thread) between a specific way of doing things being unsustainable, and our society in general being unsustainable. It's far harder to show the latter than the former, because we can always change our way of doing things.
- gambiting 13y ago
  Keep in mind that uranium is also a limited resource. Might last us another thousand years,but it will run out eventually. Unless by nuclear you meant fusion power,but we are not quite there yet.
  - pdonis 13y ago
    In a thousand years we'll have fusion power--in fact we'll probably have better sources of energy than fusion (like the ability to tap solar energy much more efficiently than we do now).
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Nuclear Great! Fission or fusion? What fuel cycle? What reactor design? Is it proven? Experimentally? Prototype? In production? What's the fuel availability look like? How about issues with proliferation, waste disposal, plant accidents, and plant decommissioning? I didn't spell out my alternatives in detail, but yes, nuclear is an option for electrical generation (I suppose you could also run a power loom or stamping gin off of one if you really wanted to). However of the options: • Fusion's not there yet. Tokamak, NIF, or Polywell. Nothing but the shortest experimental possible ignitions yet. Nothing remotely commercializable. Several fuel cycles are fairly constrained. • Uranium/plutonium LWR fission has a pretty critical fuel shortage. 80 years at present usage, 6 if we go 100% nuclear at present energy consumption rates. Scale in anticipated global energy growth rates and it's less than that. Waste, decommissioning, and accident issues are significant. • Breeding uranium or plutonium might extend fuel supplies but creates significant weapons-grade material proliferation concerns. • The TeraPower "nuclear candle" is a nice bridge technology ... if it works, but that only lasts until our existing nuclear waste is consumed (which raises the point: you don't want to be too good at disposal: the stuff might come in handy). • Thorium has a vocal and occasionally demented lobby on the Intarwebs, but even the optimistic Chinese see MSR as 25 years out from commercialization. And I see energy needs coming to a head Real Soon Now -- rather less than 25 years, at any rate. And none of these technologies, nor wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, or tidal power give you liquid fuels, which is what planes, trains, automobiles, trucks, buses, boats, construction equipment, furnaces, generators, back-up power systems, and remote energy applications rely on. Sure, you've got Fischer-Tropsch, the Sabatier reaction, and other solid-to-liquid, gas-to-liquid, and fuel synthesis processes. All of which, scaled to the 100 million barrels of oil consumed daily globally would represent an absolutely massive investment of capital and energy. Conventional crop biofuels, wastestream-to-energy, sewage-to-energy, and advanced algael biofuels all suffer from the challenge that your dealing with net captured flux of around 10 W/meter^2, maybe 100 W/meter^2 for algae, of photosynthetic efficiency. And you've got to capture that on land that's not already producing food you're planning on eating, or ecosystems you're planning on sustaining, you know, the rest of the Earth's biosystems. The 100 quadrillion BTUs the USofA consumes annually corresponds to 29,307 TWh of energy, which at 10W/m^2 and 8 hours of effective insolation (a typical 30% duty cycle) means you're looking at 1,115,186 km^2 ... or a square 1056 km on a side (430,576 square miles, or 656 miles on a side, for the non-metric). Sure, NYC of 1894 had 200,000 horses pumping out, literally, 5 million pounds of horseshit daily (https://ffbsccn.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/superfreakonomics-and-the-parable-of-the-horse-manure-there-is-so-much-i-dont-know/ https://ffbsccn.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/superfreakonomics-a...). And the straight estimates were accurate: keep that up and you'd be buried in the stuff (you already were knee deep in places). Thing is: it's possible for things to get that bad. Ever been to India? Or just seen the opening sequence of Slumdog Millionaire? Because that's how a lot of people live: combing through trash heaps and swimming in shit (not equine, either). And the reason NYC didn't drown in brown is because of this one-time lottery winnings of uncomposted Carboninferous lignan-laced pulp and algae decay which we've been talking about here (if decomposers had evolved slightly faster, we'd be discussing this in a small agrarian village somewhere). Technology, as I said, followed that windfall, it didn't create it (Colonel Drake's oil rig: borrowed from the Chinese who'd been drilling 1000 feet for salt since the year 1000). That rabbit's already been pulled from the hat, and we've been looking for a long time, pretty thoroughly, without finding many more rabbits for, oh, 40 years or so. The automobile didn't "come along", it was pumped from an oil well that's now running dry despite fracking fluids leaking into your water supply. Technology doesn't create entropic gradients, it taps them. And we've got a pretty good idea of what provides useful energy: Moving stuff, falling stuff, blowing stuff, bright light, chemical bonds, and nuclear bonds. And it's mostly the bright light and chemicals that seem to work well for us, higher up it's not sufficiently dense or reliable, lower down and it's too complex. I don't see gradients (flows or stocks) we can tap with the ease and usefulness we have for the past 250 years.