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'Environmentally friendly' scepticism

Ashles

Pith Artist
Ashles
Joined
Apr 28, 2003
Messages
8,694
Location
The '80s
There are many things we are supposed to do today to be more green and of course recycling and pumping out less bad stuff into the environment can only be a good thing.

However people seem to be so gripped with rabid desire to be more green that they encourage us to do things that I wonder how genuinely environmentally friendly they would be when all aspects were fully taken into account.

For example solar panels. People are very proud of their energy saving when they install solar panels, but seem to forget that solar panels don't grow on trees or last for ever. There is a fair amount of industry involved in the making of a solar panel so I was wondering if anyone knew whether in the long run it was still an overall benefit.

Similarly I have heard (and was wondering whether anyone could confirm or refute) that some energy efficient vehicles are actually much more difficult to dispose of than regular vehicles. Again does the benefit outweigh the negative?

Are there any similar activities/green products that anyone can think of that may actually be overall fairly neutral (or worse actually harmful) in terms of all aspects of the involved process being taken into account?
 
Good questions.


This reminds me of when environmentalists burned SUV's on a new car lot only to find out later that the amount of harmful pollution the burning vehicles emitted was more than had they simply used gas for their estimated lifespan.
 
Also I read that, again, production of lower carbon emission cars is quite a lot more expensive, envirnmentally speaking, than regular cars. But I'm afraid I don't have any figures for that. Does anyone else?
 
Ashles said:
For example solar panels. People are very proud of their energy saving when they install solar panels, but seem to forget that solar panels don't grow on trees or last for ever. There is a fair amount of industry involved in the making of a solar panel so I was wondering if anyone knew whether in the long run it was still an overall benefit.
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I'd like to know more about this. From solarbuzzI found:

Crystal growing and casting plants are best sited where there is an abundant source of reliable, cheap energy to power the high temperature operations. They do not need to be sited close to solar cell plants because wafer transportation is cheap, but most are because the investment has been by PV manufacturers to secure wafer supply to their cell plants.
Click to expand...

How much energy?

Anyone else know more?
 
The Enviormental movement does have some extreme elements who seem to hate industrial society and technology in general,and this leads them into doing some really stupid things.
 
Ashles said:
However people seem to be so gripped with rabid desire to be more green that they encourage us to do things that I wonder how genuinely environmentally friendly they would be when all aspects were fully taken into account.
Click to expand...
The difficult part is that there is no absolute environmental friendliness. It is relative to -- get this -- the environment. What is environmentally friendly in one place in the world, may be environmentally unfriendly in another. In a dry area it is environmentally friendly to conserve water, in a wet area this may not be so important. In some places it may be important to recycle some materials, while in others it may be better to waste those and instead focus on the recycling of other materials. There is no such thing as environmentally friendly to all environments, and I think "environmentally friendly" should mean that one looks at what is necessary for the environment one is in instead of trying to find the magic solution that is supposed to work everywhere.

Another aspect is that what is "good" and what is "bad" for the environment is like all judgements of "good" and "bad": a value judgement. And as such there it is largely subjective. What is good for some maybe considered bad by others. It depends on the things you value, and some value their unspoiled horizons more than the people who value reducing CO2 the most and to put up windturbines everywhere.

There is a fair amount of industry involved in the making of a solar panel so I was wondering if anyone knew whether in the long run it was still an overall benefit.
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Whether there is a benefit depends on the environment in which they are made, the environment in which they are used and the things you value. Some high end photovoltaic cells are able to produce more energy during their life time than was necessary to make them, but this is of course not guaranteed everywhere. There needs to be enough sunshine for them to do so.

In terms of overall energy efficiency, solar panels do quite badly. But if you make them in a place where there is enough energy and you use them in a place that everybody agrees is a pristine natural environment, for producing energy that would otherwise have required a diesel generator... then I think it is fair to say there is an environmental benefit.
 
So it seems that the avergae person person putting solar panels on their house might reduce their heating bills a bit, but is not really being environmentally friendly. Actually the opposite.
 
Depends on what you mean with "solar panels". If you are talking about solar collectors, you know the things that have water running through them that is then heated by the sun, then they probably are environmentally friendly. Those things don't require a lot of energy to make, have a working life that is for all intends and purposes forever... and they work. Very well, in fact.

If you mean photovoltaic cells, you know the things that convert a bit of sunlight into electricity directly (and what is usually meant with "solar panels")and then uses the electricity to heat the house, then no. Electric heating is a pretty wasteful thing to begin with. A small electric heater probably uses up all the energy that you generate with a solar cell on the roof. Using natural gas is much more efficient, in terms of energy used, CO2 emitted and so on.

Whether putting photovoltaic cells up is environmentally friendly depends on the environment this "average person" is in and what the electricity is used for. If there is a reasonable amount of sunlight and the electricity is mainly used for powering fluorescent bulbs, then it may be environmentally friendly.
 
Earthborn said:
Whether putting photovoltaic cells up is environmentally friendly depends on the environment this "average person" is in and what the electricity is used for. If there is a reasonable amount of sunlight and the electricity is mainly used for powering fluorescent bulbs, then it may be environmentally friendly.
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Really? The industry involved in creating and fitting solar panels would be outweighed by the saving for flourescent bulbs? Over what time period?
I would have thought that it would be a pretty long time and I thought PV cells deteriorated over time.

Does anyone know where there might be any figures on this kind of stuff?
 
Solar thermal plants (that make electricty by using sunlight to heat a fluid, such a synthetic oil, or a salt) have opperating costs at around $0.12 per KW, which is much higher than coal (around $0.05.) However, during peak load times, such as midafternoon on a hot summer day, the marginal cost of extra power in a grid can easily reach $0.15 or $0.20, because the power company needs to turn on expensive generators, or buy power from other states. Since solar thermal power makes electricity quite well during those peak times, it's already competitive; it's just not a replacement, yet. Solar 1 (the first plant built) produces about 10 MW, and because it can store heat, it produces 7 MW even at night, so there's hope for more solar plants.

Solar PV's much costlier, $0.25 per KW, but we stopped subsidizing research here in the US when the energy crisis ended, and oil prices plummeted. Japan and Garmany are leading the field, and prices there could fall considerably.

Solar's not dead, by any means.
 
Ashles said:
Also I read that, again, production of lower carbon emission cars is quite a lot more expensive, envirnmentally speaking, than regular cars. But I'm afraid I don't have any figures for that. Does anyone else?
Click to expand...

I think the hope is that some basic research into the materials and uses of these green things will eventually reduce the basic costs to the point where mass production can make them economically viable compared to the standard they are meant to replace. Solar cells, for example, have come down in price dramatically in the last 30 years (though they still have a way to go to "catch on", and perhaps as importantly, so has battery technology).
 
ImaginalDisc said:
Solar 1 (the first plant built) produces about 10 MW, and because it can store heat, it produces 7 MW even at night, so there's hope for more solar plants.
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Did you have anything to do with Solar1, ID? (I presume this is referring to the Solar1 power plant at Daggett, CA, which was, indeed, a 10MW heliostat/tower/steam prototype plant). I worked on the computer control systems for it, long long ago. It only ran for about ten years (1982-1992, I think), before it was decommissioned. As far as I know, it had no storage capabilities. One study (http://www.cs.ntu.edu.au/homepages/jmitroy/sid101/solar1/Smith.html) cites a parabolic collector system that promised power at the 6-7 cents/kilowatt hour range.
 
I'm not so much referring to the monetary cost of such devices or technology, rather whether there is a genuine net gain for the actual environment. Will the long term benefits of something outweigh the environmental impact of construction.

For example in my local paper today (The Argus) a story describes a couple who are "hoping to lead their community in a green revolution" by unstallin a wind turbine on their property.
It is a 50ft high wind turbine constructed at a cost of £20,000 of their money and a further £2,500 of government money.
The energy produced will be put back into the National Grid and the amount generated is taken off their bill.

Now, again, I don't know how much energy a wind turbine produces, or what is involved in the construction, erection and maintenance of a 50ft turbine so I have 2 questions: would the overall long term benefit to the environment be positive, and would an investment of £22,500 be better placed elsewhere?
 
Ashles said:
I'm not so much referring to the monetary cost of such devices or technology, rather whether there is a genuine net gain for the actual environment. Will the long term benefits of something outweigh the environmental impact of construction.
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I've been trying to find the same information myself. :-)


Ashles said:
Now, again, I don't know how much energy a wind turbine produces, or what is involved in the construction, erection and maintenance of a 50ft turbine so I have 2 questions: would the overall long term benefit to the environment be positive, and would an investment of £22,500 be better placed elsewhere?
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Wind farms can be very damaging to bird populations. The impact is going to be less with just one turbine, but I still have no idea whether the net benefit to the environment would be positive.
There is a report on the impact wind farms in California have on birds. I can't post links yet, but if you search Google for CEC-700-2005-015 it should be the first link to come up.
 
There is a potential disposal problem with low energy bulbs:

Low energy bulb disposal warning

It seems they contain mercury so we have to be careful around thm if broken.

I spokesman from Greenpeace said this:

Louise Molloy from the environmental group Greenpeace said that a public information campaign was needed in order to advise people how to dispose of low-energy bulbs safely.

But she added: "Rather than being worried about the mercury these light bulbs contain, the general public should be reassured that using them will actually reduce the amount of mercury overall in our atmosphere."
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I am curious as to how it will reduce the amount of mercury in the atmosphere. It may well do, but I wondered if anyone knew how?
 
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