We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Mirrors

…a major new study of the economics of solar, published in Harvard Business Review (HBR), finds that the waste produced by solar panels will make electricity from solar panels four times more expensive than the world’s leading energy analysts thought. “The economics of solar,” write Atalay Atasu and Luk N. Van Wassenhove of Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires, one of Europe’s leading business schools, and Serasu Duran of the University of Calgary, will “darken quickly as the industry sinks under the weight of its own trash.”

Conventional wisdom today holds that the world will quadruple the number of solar panels in the world over the next decade. “And that’s not even taking into consideration the further impact of possible new regulations and incentives launched by the green-friendly Biden administration,” Atasu, Wassenhove, and Duran write in HBR.

But the volume of solar panel waste will destroy the economics of solar even with the subsidies, they say. “By 2035,” write the three economists, “discarded panels would outweigh new units sold by 2.56 times. In turn, this would catapult the LCOE (levelized cost of energy, a measure of the overall cost of an energy-producing asset over its lifetime) to four times the current projection.”

h/t Sid V

20 Replies to “We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Mirrors”

  1. Dumber yet is that all of it is a result of demonizing a trace gas in the atmosphere that is essential to life on earth.

  2. Old news. Many have said the same thing since the concept first raised it’s ugly head. The same applies to wind turbines.

  3. And this is the green energy source (solar) that will power our government mandated electric vehicle purchase when they forcibly halt gas and diesel vehicle production in the coming years.
    An old story from 2019 reveals the true carbon footprint of electric vs fossil fuel powered cars.
    https://www.westernjournal.com/scam-century-scientific-study-destroys-electric-car-debate/
    And if you take into account the environmental disaster waiting in the wings when lithium demand for batteries ramp up, well we are truly on a trajectory to destroy our planet and economies.
    See here…https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/the-environmental-impact-of-lithium-batteries/

    It seems to me to be a push to focus the narrative on solving issues with green solutions when the underlying premise for doing so in the first place is junk science (Climate Emergency, Climate Change, Global Warming etc). Maybe that’s deliberate Machiavellian, as we slowly starve and freeze to death.

  4. File under “things that have been obvious to all rational people for decades”.

    1839, the year they were invented. Like batteries, the internal combustion engine, steam, sail, electric motors, they are mature technology. Yes, there are improvements to be made. But there are no breakthroughs coming. Have not been, for a long time now.

    Photovoltaics were there when AC current was competing with DC current. When Tesla was trying to transmit power wirelessly. When steam and the horse were competing with the ICE and electric cars for dominance. It was there when people were installing wind chargers for their electric fences. It was there when coal was becoming the dominant form of power generation in the world. It was there when hydro generation appeared, and when nuclear did.

  5. Now we come to the next point.

    Harvard

    Harvard is the primary source for all evil ideas and people in the universe. Has been for at least 100 years. They are fully on board as Holy Defenders of the Sacred Narrative. Why would the Harvard Business Review allow this to be published? We can only speculate.

    Throwing green under the bus, means they are preparing to cover up something very bad.

    If you don’t want your sources attacked, then your sources should not have sided with Walter Duranty.

  6. Meh….’bout the only place they have any decent capability is on a remote cabin or an RV.
    Industrial Solar has been shown to be a Colossal fk up on steroids. Billions wasted (given to developers), with Billions of Tons of non recyclable material created in short order – JUST LIKE WIND TURBINES…

    When the pendulum swings….and one hopes that occurs in the not too distant future….I pray it comes down with an Insanely sharp edge.

  7. The “electrical engineers and physicists” who dominate the elected and political “science” ranks have decreed that you will suck on those (wind and solar) pacifiers regardless of the energy (and general purpose) poverty that their electorate has secured for us all. Environmental costs be damned, the theology of demon Carbon removal is sacred and now fully integrated with the state and most all other (western) institutions contaminated by cultural Marxism and rent seeking bounty. Premier Xi approves.

  8. I’d share the link with other people who are interested in solar but Shellenberger’s picture makes him look like someone you can’t take seriously. Lenny and Squiggy redux.

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