Nat'l Talk Show Hosts Are Lying About Solar Energy

Q: As a manufacturer of solar devices I'm finding this discussion interesting but without much substance. I purchase materials on the open market, and am more or less obliged to conclude that what I pay represents all of the costs of those materials along with enough markup to keep everyone in the supply chain solvent. There's no way for me to know what portion of that cost resulted from fossil fuel consumption. I'm certain that it's more than none, and it's certainly less than all. To transform those materials (mostly wood) into product for shipment, I use in the neighborhood of 2 kW*hr of electricity to power computer, tools, and lighting to produce a single 48 ft^2 (4.46 m^2) solar heating panel. Those costs, along with overhead expenses like shop rent all get rolled into the price I charge. Customer feedback to date indicates that the panels have produced a fuel savings equal to their purchase price within a 2 to 4 year time frame. It appears that the panels will typically have service lifetimes of at least 15 years - which means that they'll probably last longer than I. Installed, the panels consume no fuel and use no electricity - and the energy they provide replaces that same amount of energy from (typically) fuel oil, LPG, or natural gas. I can't address the costs of any other solar device - and I certainly don't feel comfortable making sweeping statements about /all/ solar devices, but I think the urge to do exactly that is producing a lot of (possibly harmful) misinformation.

A: We are not trying to reduce global warming by reducing the absorbed solar radiation. We are trying to do it by reducing the emission of greenhouse gases which otherwise reduce heat loss heat over a long period of time. The amount of energy generated while producing a kilo of CO2 by burning organic fuels is tiny compared to the total energy which that kilo of CO2 keeps in by reducing the earth's infra-red radiation, over the time for which it stays in the atmosphere. So what you need to compare is the additional absorption of insolation by the panel over the mirror, versus the energy loss reduction produced by the equivalent fossil fuel power source, over the lifetime of the emitted CO2. On that basis you will find the solar panels win hands down. It is only when you take into account the construction, installation and maintenance costs that they start to lose.

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