How China captured the sun – and cast a shadow over Europe
By Paul Homewood
Europe’s ambitious plans to expand green energy generation with “Made in EU” solar panels face a distinctly cloudy future as the continent faces a massive glut of the devices.
Millions of solar panels are piling up in warehouses across the Continent because of a manufacturing battle in China, where cut-throat competition has driven the world’s biggest panel-makers to expand production far faster than they can be installed.
The supply glut has caused solar panel prices to halve. This sounds like great news for the EU, which recently pledged to triple its solar power capacity to 672 gigawatts by 2030. That’s roughly equivalent to 200 large nuclear power stations.
In reality, though, it has caused a crisis. Under the EU’s “Green Deal Industrial Plan”, 40pc of the panels to be spread across European fields and roofs were meant to be made by European manufacturers.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/23/china-solar-panels-europe-net-zero-energy/
It’s all very well benefitting from Chinese subsidies now, but what will happen when the panels need replacing in ten years time, and there is a shortage of manufacturing capacity?
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Casting a Shadow?
If Solar Panels Are So Clean, Why Do They Produce So Much Toxic Waste?
The problem of solar panel disposal “will explode with full force in two or three decades and wreck the environment” because it “is a huge amount of waste and they are not easy to recycle.”
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in 2016 estimated there was about 250,000 metric tonnes of solar panel waste in the world at the end of that year. IRENA projected that this amount could reach 78 MILLION metric tonnes by 2050.
Solar panels contain lead, cadmium, and other toxic chemicals that cannot be removed without breaking apart the entire panel. “Approximately 90% of most PV modules are made up of glass,” notes San Jose State environmental studies professor Dustin Mulvaney. “However, this glass often cannot be recycled as float glass due to impurities. Common problematic impurities in glass include plastics, lead, cadmium and antimony.”
Grim Details here —
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/23/if-solar-panels-are-so-clean-why-do-they-produce-so-much-toxic-waste/?sh=541f1717121c
Ah yes, these are the millions of high paid, high quality, Green jobs that are going to replace the dirty, old fashioned, industrial jobs currently being wiped out because they are carbon intensive.
Whenever I read these stories the last three verses of “To a Mouse” come to mind
Thy wee bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble,
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch cauld!
But, Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Still thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me
The present only toucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e’e.
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!
This is what one might describe as a public policy failure.
Solar panels, just like electric vehicle batteries, require large amounts of the toxic element ores that George up above mentioned: Cadmium, lead, some rare earth elements too. EV batteries certainly do: lithium, various lanthanides and actinides, as well as others with lighter nuclei.
It is ridiculous that the U.S. has a similar mania for solar panels as the UK, despite the fact that we can’t easily manufacture them domestically. We have all the cadmium, lead, rare earths needed, but we don’t want to mine them due to how messy and poisonous it is to do so, unless with great cost for miner safety and groundwater protection. So instead we buy them from China, exacerbating our dependence on a country on the other side of the world. China can’t mine any better than we can, but they don’t care so much about their citizens. Lately, they have been obtaining solar panel inputs from so called “artisanal mines” in Republic of Congo and Zaire. Artisanal mining is a euphemism for impoverished locals mining these toxic metals without any safety measures at all.
China has strict quotas on the amount of these ores that they will sell. This makes sense, as they want to make the most they can out of vertical integration up through solar panels, given the human and environmental costs of mining the components. This has been the state of affairs since 2010.
Our decision-makers in the US and UK impose laws requiring more and more use of solar panels and electric vehicles despite the domestic unavailability of components used to manufacture them. I can’t imagine what they are thinking. As for a 40% ‘Made in EU’ solar panel manufacturing quota, I can’t imagine where they thought they would get the raw materials necessary, even if there weren’t a “race to the bottom” between Chinese manufacturers driving down prices.
“This sounds like great news for the EU, which recently pledged to triple its solar power capacity to 672 gigawatts by 2030. That’s roughly equivalent to 200 large nuclear power stations.”
Conflating capacity and output, yet again.
That was the essence of my comment on the article. These reporters are clueless.
Have they solved the horrendous problem of SUNDOWN?
Putting capital – and land – into a system that produces power only 6 hours a day is preposterous. Especially when that production period does NOT align with peak demand.
Spock to Kirk, “Captain, grid-level solar is illogical.”
This whole eco/net zero nonsense is supported by people who don’t look below the surface, I’m sure that is clear to people like us who do look harder.
The big problem as I see it is: How do we get the millions of people like that to see sense? They seem to think that if we don’t do all the things the net zero profiteers want us to do, Mother Earth will be uninhabitable, It’s another “Project Fear” that may eventually be discredited, hopefully not too late for the West to avoid bankruptcy.
In the meantime the Chinese are cashing in with little or no regard to pollution and our naïve leaders can’t accept it because it’s the other side of the world. At the same time National Grid is proposing to run power lines dangling on pylons all the way from Scotland to the South of England and I hear that Kier Starmer wants to spend millions on floating wind machines round the coast. People with such daft ideas puzzle me as to how they got to their positions.
“when the panels need replacing in ten years time”
Have we got any data on that? Certainly, several people in our village had them fitted when the first subsidy scheme was announced (2010?) and as far as I know there have been no signs of having them replaced.
So it will be interesting to see the eventual life span of these things.
If wind turbines are the ashtray, solar panels are the motorbike
A dose of reality might be a good thing. Any sailor will tell you, when the sun goes down the wind drops….about the time folk switch on their heat pumps, cook evening meal and plug in the EV.