President Joe Biden’s goal to make the U.S. electric grid carbon-free by 2035, will require the U.S. to diversify its domestic energy sources, including a heavy reliance on solar power.
This is foolish for two reasons: The solar industry in the U.S. is non-existent, so most purchases will have to be made from Chinese companies, and solar panels create more waste than they’re worth.
Of the top 10 solar panel manufacturers in the world, only one is based in the U.S., First Solar Inc., and it ranks ninth in overall production.
The top four suppliers are all Chinese-based companies, as the Chinese government heavily subsidizes and finances the industry, exporting panels at a price non-Chinese makers simply can’t match.
The only other two manufacturers in the top 10 global manufacturers that aren’t Chinese-run firms are from Canada and South Korea.
Even First Solar produces most of its panels offshore — only 40% of its panel manufacturing is done domestically.
Economists predict reshoring the solar industry — as Mr. Biden has proposed to create new green jobs to replace the thousands he killed by canceling construction on the Keystone Pipeline — will entail huge sums of U.S. taxpayer monies.
“It would require a combination of hefty subsidies through tax breaks and tariffs to burden low-priced imports,” according to economists and industry specialists who spoke to the Wall Street Journal, and even then, they considered it, “a long-shot” in being able to compete with China.
So, in other words, the Chinese would benefit from higher global solar purchases, not U.S. workers. America last.
The other misnomer about solar is that it’s clean. Yet, a new Harvard Business Review Study has found solar panels will create 50 times more waste than predicted.
“The economics of solar,” will “darken quickly as the industry sinks under the weight of its own trash,” the study’s authors wrote.
The study calculated customers would have to replace panels far sooner than every 30 years, as the industry assumes, and by 2035 “discarded panels would outweigh new units sold by 2.56 times. In turn, this would catapult the LCOE (levelized cost of energy, a measure of the overall cost of an energy-producing asset over its lifetime) to four times the current projection.”
It’s more cost-efficient to manufacture new panels than it is to recycle them, the authors found, leading to a huge volume of hazardous, heavy metal waste that will seep into the earth, causing more pollution.
Indian researchers last year found the amount of solar waste will far exceed that produced by iPhones, laptops, and other electronics.
“The totality of these unforeseen costs could crush industry competitiveness,” the authors concluded.
Perhaps, it’s time for the Biden administration to rethink its climate-change agenda. For there’s a real dark side to solar.
Read more at Washington Times
The problems with using solar can easily be handled by the same means they have been handled up to this point. The cost of having standby fossil fuel plants for when the sun doesn’t shine is ignored. The cost of upgrading our power transmission system to handle the greater distances needed for solar is ignored. The fact that most panels are made in China is already being ignored. All Biden has to do about the toxic waste issue is ignore it.
Look at all the acres of land that could be used to raise Livestock,Grow Crops or for Wildlife covered over with Solar Panels Where is the Audubon Society to help out the Birds when they need it?