Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread
Reply #276 –
The current cleanest Solar PV technology is printable solar, but it's energy performance is poor relative to silicon or perovskite alternatives, you need one or two orders of magnitude more panels by area to deliver the same energy. Let's be clear, that is 10x to 100x the area for energy equivalence.
Silicon, perovskite and telluride based panels are all constructed using rather nasty trace elements. lead, arsenic, cadmium, cyanide, and processing the waste from silicon or perovskite panels is banned in some locations for the same reasons that workers have to be protected form silicate dusts in the mining or construction industries. The old panels are classified as a toxic waste.
Even printable solar is a problem, they are trying to massively improve the efficiency by, ............. adding perovskites loaded with lead compounds! This stuff can have more lead in it than is actually legal in some locations to sell as paint, if you sold paint with it in it you would be charged, fined and possibly jailed by the environmental protection agencies in some regions! They proponents argue that it is safe because it's a solid, but so was the stuff that now slowly leeches poison out of landfills.
Batteries are even worse!
Until the various industry segments own up to all these issues, in other words act honestly, we aren't really making progress we are just shifting the problems around in time and location.