“We have a County and State approval process over the next couple months,” Fogarty of Concerned Citizens of Fawn Lake told me, “but it has become clear that local authorities have very little technical breadth to analyze the impacts of such a massive solar power plant.”, Lack of technical expertise can be a problem when solar developers like Sustainable Power Group, or sPower, incorrectly claim that the cadmium in its panels is not water soluble. Currently, citizens have the right to file lawsuits against government agencies and corporations to force them to abide by various environmental laws, including ones that protect the public from toxic waste. CO2 is PLANT FOOD and is greening the planet. Principia Scientific International (PSI) is a not-for-profit community interest association. According to a report by the World Health Organization in 2008, coal particulates pollution are estimated to shorten approximately 1,000,000 lives annually worldwide. A crushed non-encapsulated CdTe thin-film solar cell was subjected to two standardized batch leaching tests (i.e., Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP) and California Waste Extraction Test (WET)) and to a continuous-flow column test to assess cadmium (Cd) and tellurium (Te) dissolution under conditions simulating the acidic- and the methanogenic phases of And as the problem of the secondary market for solar shows, ultimately there needs to be some kind of international regulation. Most solar panels have a glass front that protects the PV cell and an aluminum or steel frame. You aren’t a real skeptic. Y1 - 2017/8/15 At the meeting, the representatives from industry and DTSC all acknowledged how difficult it would be to test to determine whether a solar panel being removed would be classified as hazardous waste or not. AU - Sierra Alvarez, Maria Reye. Field Reyes Sierra-Alvarez If so show it — AND STOP SHOUTING ABUSE! You don’t really care about scientific truth. I certainly now would not trust all doctors. You don’t really understand the atmosphere and you don’t really care to understand it. The local level is where action to dispose of electronic and toxic waste takes place, often under state mandates. Maybe adjust your attitude as it puts off skeptics like me, and I’m sure makes many reluctant to even glance at your ideas. From pv magazine International.. Meteorologists have been getting away wth the same tactics for 170 years and you never noticed. In 2012, First Solar stopped putting a share of its revenues into a fund for long-term waste management. The advantage of this fund over extended producer responsibility is that it would insure that solar panels are safely decommissioned, recycled, or stored over the long-term, even after solar manufacturers go bankrupt. 57-64 ISSN: 0304-3894 Subject: But it is notable that some new forms of electronic waste, namely smartphones like the iPhone, have in many cases replaced things like stereo systems, GPS devices, and alarm clocks and thus reduced their contribution to the e-waste stream. CO2 driving dangerous climate change. Cadmium dust is even more toxic, leading to respiratory, liver and kidney problems that can be fatal. None of the above. Lack of technical expertise can be a problem when solar developers like Sustainable Power Group, or sPower, incorrectly claim that the cadmium in its panels is not water soluble. “We estimate there are 100,000 pounds of cadmium contained in the 1.8 million panels,” Sean Fogarty of the group told me. Therefore, it is impossible for any vapors In the past, differing state laws have motivated the U.S. Congress to put in place national regulations. AU - Ramos-Ruiz, Adriana. Dangers and hazards of toxins in photovoltaic modules appear particularly large in countries where there are no orderly waste management systems… Especially in less developed countries in the so-called global south, which are particularly predestined for the use of photovoltaics because of the high solar radiation, it seems highly problematic to use modules that contain pollutants. And even now that you’ve been made aware of it you still don’t care. From your link I see lots of negativity against current thinking — all well and fine but where is your science? Leaching of cadmium and tellurium from cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin-film solar panels under simulated landfill conditions. “Approximately 90{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of most PV modules are made up of glass,” notes San Jose State environmental studies professor Dustin Mulvaney. ‘COVID-19: The Politics of a Pandemic Moral Panic’ – Book Excerpt, Researchers: people irrationally reject anti-lockdown findings, Israeli Scientists Prove Trump Correct on UV Light Killing COVID19, ‘This Is Not a Vaccine, it Is Irreversible Genetic Modification’ say Doctor, Coronavirus – A perspective from Britain Part 18, Solar flare in 774 AD changed Earth’s atmospheric chemistry, Science That Doesn’t Add Up: A Discussion Paper, Professor Dolores Cahill: People Will Start Dying After COVID Vaccine, Greenhouse Gas? “I’ve been involved with millions of solar panels going into the field, and now they’re getting old.”. While even silicon based solar panels have their own problematic element – lead – Mr. Westgaard says tests have shown lead leaching potential of approximately 4 grams of lead per kilowatt installed compared to approximately 23 grams of cadmium per kilowatt installed for CdTe panels. YOU CANNOT BUILD A RELIABLE ENERGY SUPPLY FROM UNRELIABLE ENERGY SOURCES. Photovoltaic panels never produce a fraction of their investment energy. They dare not sue, because to do…, Does this come as any surprise? What Drives The Jet Streams? bEnvironmental Studies Program, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, USA. In the meantime you might as well start getting used to the fact that science involves work. Cadmium is a particular toxic waste problem: The fact that cadmium can be washed out of solar modules by rainwater is increasingly a concern for local environmentalists like the Concerned Citizens of Fawn Lake in Virginia, where a 6,350 acre solar … My writings have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, Nature Energy,…, Michael Shellenberger, President, Environmental Progress. c-Si cells are currently 95% of the market.. You are an ideologue. And when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico last September, the nation’s second largest solar farm, responsible for 40 percent of the island’s solar energy, lost a majority of its panels. Although solar panels contain hazardous materials, such as lead and cadmium, they are sealed in enclosures or even sandwiched between plates of glass. That claim has been contradicted by the previously-mentioned Stuttgart research scientists who found cadmium from solar panels “can be almost completely washed out…over a period of several months…by rainwater.”. In other words, there are firms that may advertise themselves as “solar panel recyclers” but instead sell panels to a secondary markets in nations with less developed waste disposal systems. It involves making an effort. Climate always changes but you are saying that mans tiny contribution drives climate. Alternate silicon-based solar panels have similar issues with lead leaching, although cadmium is suggested to be 10 times more hazardous than Lead. Such a recycling and waste management fund could help nations address their other e-waste problems while supporting the development of a new, high-tech industry in recycling solar panels. Solar panel disposal in “regular landfills [is] not recommended in case modules break and toxic materials leach into the soil,” the Electric Power Research Institute determined in a 2016 study. “However, this glass often cannot be recycled as float glass due to impurities. Solar cells, wind bird shredders and biofuels are net energy LOSERS. The main finding promoted by IRENA’s in its 2016 report was that, “If fully injected back into the economy, the value of the recovered material [from used solar panels] could exceed USD 15 billion by 2050.”, But IRENA’s study did not compare the value of recovered material to the cost of new materials and admitted that “Recent studies agree that PV material availability is not a major concern in the near term, but critical materials might impose limitations in the long term.”, They might, but today recycling costs more than the economic value of the materials recovered, which is why most solar panels end up in landfills. They are really only good for the end user who is isolated from the grid or wants to use less power from the grid. Last July, Washington became the first U.S. state to require manufacturers selling solar panels to have a plan to recycle. James McGinn: None of this will come quickly, or easily, and some solar industry executives will resist internalizing the cost of safely storing, or recycling,  solar panel waste, perhaps for understandable reasons. Meteorological theory has always been a religion based on traditional values, couched in scientific vagueness and self-righteous dimwittedness. In addition to atmospheric pollution, coal burning produces hundreds of millions of tons of solid waste products annually, including fly ash, bottom ash, and flue-gas desulfurization sludge, that contain mercury, uranium, thorium, arsenic, and other heavy metals. Unlike other forms of imported e-waste, used solar panels can enter nations legally before eventually entering e-waste streams. 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