Is It Really "Green"? (solar panels, gas, toxic, plastic)

[K'ledgeBldr]

Advertising and marketing woes of "Green Living":

Study: 95% of Green-Marketed Products Utilize Misleading Claims - Green Products, Green Sales And Marketing, Green Building - Builder Magazine

[Submariner]

Part of it may lay with do you want a product's end-use to be 'green'?

Or do you want it's manufacture to be 'green'?

[vilmer laktow]

Good question. I've heard it said that when you factor in the energy used to manufacture and charge the batteries, the electric car is far less 'green' than a regular old gas car. People assume that a power plant is more efficient than a car but it is only slightly more efficient and the advantage gets lost by the time you transmit the energy over power lines. People don't think about the amount of energy used to manufacture and maintain wind-mills, in fact they use government subsidies to put them into use. They would never get used if it were not for subsidies. The dutch used windmills 500 years ago, and now they switched to electric power generated by gas and coal - it is cheaper. Plus the energy used to manufacture and erect one thousand wind mills is far greater than that needed to build a single coal powered electric generating plant. Less land is scarred by the fewer birds are killed. Go figure.

[Submariner]

A month ago we attended a 'sustainability community' meeting. A group of college professors were leading the meeting, and the discussion came around to photoelectric cells. The crowd was all in agreement about how there is a huge need to shift to 'green' power like solar. I got to laughing so hard they stopped the meeting.

I explained to them that I was once hired to work in a silicon crystal growing facility, where they grew crystals, sliced them into wafers and applied four layers of other materials to prepare them for circuit etching. But before I could show up for work the following week the factory was shut-down by the EPA. It became a super-fund clean-up site, and no company has been allowed to make wafers in the US since. Because that is the MOST polluting technology known to man.

For every pound of solar cells made you produce nearly four pounds to toxic or heavy-metals waste by-product. They are among the LEAST 'green' devices in terms of toxic waste and heavy-metal production.

Only nations without toxic waste regulations can make such devices.

But according to their marketing, in terms of end-user application, solar panels are very 'green'.

The other people in the meeting, were stuck like deer in headlights. None of them had ever considered how solar panels are made. They had completely bought into the marketing.

[Ecovlke]

Nice article. With our economic system, the core principle is to over-consume. If there is a market for green products then expect greenwashing. The throughput to produce any product is something the consumer should educate themselves on, at least a little, so they won't be taken for a 'green ride'.

Another thing to consider is the external cost to produce a product, and relate it to similar products. The coal company doesn't pay for the the loss of mountains when the blow the tops off of them. The public pays; not in dollars, but in loss of a mountain, loss of the clear stream that is now filled with the soil from erosion, which chokes out the DO and kills the fish; extinction of plants and animals that have had an ecosytem destroyed; people who depended on plants and animals in that ecosystem; and of course, aesthics. Also, for energy...how much is being subsidised by tax dollars to get the end product?

I've begun to pay attention to packaging. The less packaging the better; the less plastic used the better. Oh man, I hate those products that come in the plastic that takes a boxcutter to get to the product! So much waste by the way so many products are packaged. It takes energy to produce the product, energy to produce the packaging, and then............it gets thrown away. How long will it take for the packaging to breakdown in a landfill? So far, I don't think the 'green' companies have caught on to packaging. Still far too much waste.

If there's a buck to be made expect someone to try and cheat you. It's sad, but a fact. What a bunch of greenwash. We can't trust anyone when it comes to making a buck. Sad fact about humans.

[thecoalman]

Originally Posted by Ecovlke

The coal company doesn't pay for the the loss of mountains when the blow the tops off of them. The public pays; not in dollars, but in loss of a mountain, loss of the clear stream that is now filled with the soil from erosion, which chokes out the DO and kills the fish; extinction of plants and animals that have had an ecosytem destroyed; people who depended on plants and animals in that ecosystem; and of course, aesthics. Also, for energy...how much is being subsidised by tax dollars to get the end product?

The coal company is required to reclaim the land, they need to put X amount of money aside for this. In ADDITION to that every ton of coal mined in this country has a tax applied to it that is used to reclaim abandoned mining sites some of which could be 100 years old or more created long before any environmental laws were in place. In this reragrd new mining activity is helping the environment with billions of dollars collected and distributed each year through this program.

As far a subsidies this is from 2007 and with the push for renewables, the stimulus bill and other things the funds for renewables will have increased substantially since then.Subsidies for fossil fuels are relatively small, when you consider the cost per unit of generation which is the important number. In 2007 it breaks down as follows:

• Table ES5
• Coal
  • Net generation in billion kilowatthours: 1,946
    Subsidization : $854 million
    Cost per megawatthour of generation $0.44
• Refined Coal
  • Net generation in billion kilowatthours: 72
    Subsidization : $2,156 million
    Cost per megawatthour of generation: $29.81
• Nuclear
  • Net generation in billion kilowatthours: 794
    Subsidization : $1,267 million
    Cost per meggwatthour of generation: $1.59
• Solar
  • Net generation in billion kilowatthours: 1
    Subsidization : $14 million
    Cost per meggwatthour of generation: $24.34
• Wind
  • Net generation in billion kilowatthours: 31
    Subsidization : $724 million
    Cost per megawatthour of generation: $23.37

Source: Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy Markets 2007

The refined coal category is either for something like kfuel or coal to liquid fuel, the document doesn't specify. I'll also note most of the coal subsidy goes to R&D while the renewable subsides are for production.


Here's the subsidies for liquid fuels:

• Table ES6.
• Natural Gas and Petroleum Liquids
  • FuelConsumption(quadrillion Btu): 55.78
    Subsidization : $1,921 Million
    Subsidy per million Btu: $0.03
• Ethanol/Biofuels
  • FuelConsumption(quadrillion Btu): 0.57
    Subsidization : $3,249 Million
    Subsidy per million Btu: $5.72

That breaks down to fractions of a penny for gallon of gasoline and about 52 cents for a gallon of ethanol. AFAIK the farm subsidies are not included in the ethanol subsidies so it's actually much more.

[Submariner]

I just heard about 'Solyndra'.

A corporation that wanted to build a factory to make solar panels in the US, a 'green' renewable resource industry.

They were already lined up asking for grants before the big stimulus bail-out. So they got $500million to build their new factory. Now after they have spent a $half-billion$ and are finishing construction. They got to playing with the numbers to see how much it will cost to produce solar panels [staying within full compliance of EPA regulations, paying union wages and taxes].

They can not compete in the marketplace. China-made solar panels are much cheaper.

So after spending a $half-billion$ they are shutting down.

[thecoalman]

Originally Posted by forest beekeeper

China-made solar panels are much cheaper.

One reason for that is they are utilizing much cheaper electric derived from coal, some of it shipped from here. It would be comical if it wasn't so serious.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/22/sc...l.html?_r=1&hp