21 questions for solar PV explorers

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Today’s post is inspired by Bill McKibben’s speaking in Santa Fe for the second time in less than a year. In 2023, he advised people not to be a “NIMBY” when corporations propose installing large-scale solar or wind facilities. Alas. I’ve still got questions about these systems:

21 questions  

1.         Do you agree with Herman Daly’s principles—don’t take from the Earth faster than it can replenish, and don’t waste faster than it can absorb?

2.         Should solar PV evaluations recognize the extractions, water, wood, fossil fuels and intercontinental shipping involved in manufacturing solar PV systems?

3.         How should a manufacturer prove that slave laborers did not make any part of its solar PV system?

4.         Should evaluations of solar PVs’ ecological impacts include impacts from chemicals leached during PVs’ manufacture?

5.         Should evaluations assess the ecological impacts of spraying large-scale solar facilities’ land with herbicides to kill vegetation that could dry and catch fire?

6.         Does your fire department have a plan for responding to a large-scale solar facility fire on a sunny day—when solar-generated electricity cannot be turned off?

7.         Since utilities can’t shut off rooftop solar’s power generation on a sunny day, firefighters will not enter the building: they could be electrocuted. Meanwhile, every solar panel deployed on a rooftop increases a building’s electrical connections and fire hazards. How/can your fire department protect buildings with rooftop solar?

8.         Solar panels are coated with PFAs in four places. Panels cracked during hailstorms can leach chemicals into groundwater. Who will monitor and mitigate the chemicals leached onto land under solar panels?

9.         To keep clean and efficient, solar panels require cleaning. Per month, how much water will the solar PV facility near you require?

10.       Covering land with paved roads, parking lots, shopping malls, data centers…and large solar facilities…disrupts healthy water cycling and soil structure. Should evaluations assess the impact of these losses? How/can you restore healthy water cycling and soil structure?

11.       Since solar PVs generate power only when the sun shines—but electricity users expect its availability 24/7—such customers require backup from the fossil-fuel-powered grid or from highly toxic batteries. Should marketers stop calling solar PVs “renewable,” “green,” “clean,” “sustainable” and “carbon neutral?”

12.       Inverters convert the direct current (DC) electricity generated by solar panels to alternating current (AC)—the kind of electricity used by most buildings, electronics and appliances. (Boats and RVs do not connect to the grid; they use DC—batteries—to power their appliances.) Inverters “chop” the electric current on building wires, generating a kind of radiation. What are the hazards of such radiation? How/can you mitigate it? 

13.       At their end-of-usable-life, solar PVs are hazardous waste. Who pays the ecological costs to dispose of them?

14.       Who pays the financial bill to dispose of solar PV systems at their end-of-usable-life? If you’ve got a large-scale solar facility, did your county commissioners require the corporation to post a bond so that if/when it goes bankrupt, your county doesn’t pay that financial bill?

15.       After a solar facility’s waste has been removed, how/will the land be restored?

16.       From cradles-to-graves, who is qualified to evaluate solar PVs’ ecological soundness? Should the expert carry liability for their evaluation? Should consumers require a cradle-to-grave evaluation from a liability-carrying expert before purchasing a solar PV system?

17.       Do solar PVs contribute to overshoot—using water, ores and other materials faster than the Earth can replenish them?

18.       If overshoot is a primary problem, and climate change, loss of wildlife species and pollution are consequences of overshoot, do we change our expectations of electric power, devices, appliances and the Internet?

19.       Can you name five unsustainable expectations about electric power?

20.       Can you name five sustainable expectations about electric power?

21.       In your region (defined by your watershed), who knows how to live sustainably?

RELATED NEWS

SUBSIDIZING SOLAR

U.S. subsidies of semiconductor and green energy manufacturers could reach $1 trillion.  

When it opened in 2014, the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in the Mojave Desert was the world’s largest solar thermal power station. Read about its daily consumption of natural gas, the subsidies it used to fund its $2.2 billion cost, its devastation of 3500 acres of desert habitat, its fire, and annual production of electricity.

END-OF-LIFE-E-WASTE

End-of-life-e-waste (including from solar panels) poisons Ghana, Malaysia and Thailand —and harms children who scour junkyards for food and schooling money. Actual end-of-life-e-waste rises five times faster than documented e-waste. Of course, the vast majority of e-waste occurs during manufacturing (mining, smelting, refining, “doping” of chemicals, intercontinental shipping of raw materials, etc.).

INSPIRATION

The new Just Transition Litigation Tracking Tool from the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre has documented, up to 31 May 2024, 60 legal cases launched around the world by Indigenous Peoples, other communities and workers harmed by “renewable” supply chains. Cases brought against states and/or the private sector in transition mineral mining and solar, wind and hydropower sectors challenge environmental abuses (77% of tracked cases), water pollution and/or access to water (80%), and abuse of Indigenous Peoples’ rights (55%), particularly the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC – 35% of cases). These cases should warn companies and investors that expensive, time-consuming litigation can quickly eat up the benefits of such short-cuts.

For two decades, a small group of nuns in rural Kansas has taken on Netflix, Amazon and Google on social issues. Even when their stocks amount to only $2,000, the nuns propose resolutions at shareholders’ meetings. For examples, the sisters have asked Chevon to assess its human rights policies, and for Amazon to publish its lobbying expenditures.

When Rio Tinto proposed mining lithium in Serbia’s Jadar Valley (whose deposits could cover 90% of Europe’s current lithium needs), the corporation claimed that mining would meet environmental protection requirements. Locals learned about the mining’s potentially devastating impacts on groundwater, soil, water usage, livestock and biodiversity from tailings, wastewater, noise, air pollution and light pollution. 100,000 Serbians took to the streets, blocked railways—and moved President Aleksandar Vucic to promise that mining will not proceed until environmentalists’ concerns are satisfied.

MINING

As demand for the tin ore cassiterite (used to coat other metals and prevent corrosion) soars, Brazil’s Ibama environment agency plays cat and mouse with thousands of illegal miners pouring into Yanomami reserves. In 2022, The International Trade Administration estimates that the solar industry used over 22,000 tons of tin.

To keep going, society needs four things: economics, energy, minerals and technology. Simon Michaux (Associate Professor at geological Survey of Finland, developing a plan to transform our relationship between energy, minerals and industrialization, as the existing proposed strategic plans are logistically impractical) explains this—and why solar, wind and batteries are useless (harmful) in this equation.

Digitalization impacts our cognitive structures, interactactions—and our mental health.