If solar has gotten so cheap, why isn’t there more of it?
Why don’t more homes have this sign? Photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture/Flickr.
Some people who worry about peak oil like to point out that renewable energy won’t save us. That is, given the amount of fossil fuels that the world uses today, it would take an unrealistically large increase in the amount of renewables available now to make up the difference as oil, natural gas and coal start to deplete.
So we might as well resign ourselves now to a future of shivering in the dark.
Those same peak oil doomers share what they seem to think is news to the rest of us — namely, that solar panels require oil. Petroleum-based plastics and chemicals go into solar panel components. And of course energy, mostly fossil fuels, is required to make, ship and even install solar panels.
This is somehow supposed to mean that solar power is bogus and that photovoltaics are, in essence, merely a feel-good offshoot of fossil fuels.
“Solar panels are just a way to store oil,” a well known peak oiler once told me. “And if you’re going to store oil, I’d rather just keep a tanker ship filled with crude anchored off the coast.” Read more…