22 questions for solar PV explorers
- Do you agree with Herman Daly’s principles—don’t take from the Earth faster than it can replenish, and don’t waste faster than it can absorb?
- Should solar PV evaluations recognize the extractions, water, wood, fossil fuels and intercontinental shipping involved in manufacturing solar PV systems?
- How should a manufacturer prove that slave laborers did not make any part of its solar PV system?
- Should evaluations of solar PVs’ ecological impacts include impacts from chemicals leached during PVs’ manufacture?
- Before it became a solar PV facility, what happened on this land? Was it acquired by eminent domain?
- Should evaluations assess the ecological impacts of spraying large-scale solar facilities’ land with herbicides to kill vegetation that could dry and catch fire?
- Does your fire department have a plan for responding to a large-scale solar facility fire on a sunny day—when solar-generated electricity cannot be turned off?
- Since utilities can’t shut off rooftop solar’s power generation on a sunny day, firefighters will not enter the building: they could be electrocuted. Meanwhile, every solar panel deployed on a rooftop increases a building’s electrical connections and fire hazards. How/can your fire department protect buildings with rooftop solar?
- Solar panels are coated with PFAs in four places. Panels cracked during hailstorms can leach chemicals into groundwater. Who will monitor and mitigate the chemicals leached onto land under solar panels?
- To keep clean and efficient, solar panels require cleaning. Per month, how much water will the solar PV facility near you require?
- Covering land with paved roads, parking lots, shopping malls, data centers…and large solar facilities…disrupts healthy water cycling and soil structure. Should evaluations assess the impact of these losses? How/can you restore healthy water cycling and soil structure?
- Since solar PVs generate power only when the sun shines—but electricity users expect its availability 24/7—such customers require backup from the fossil-fuel-powered grid or from highly toxic batteries. Should marketers stop calling solar PVs “renewable,” “green,” “clean,” “sustainable” and “carbon neutral?
- Inverters convert the direct current (DC) electricity generated by solar panels to alternating current (AC)—the kind of electricity used by most buildings, electronics and appliances. (Boats and RVs do not connect to the grid; they use DC—batteries—to power their appliances.) Inverters “chop” the electric current on building wires, generating a kind of radiation. What are the hazards of such radiation? How/can you mitigate it?
- At their end-of-usable-life, solar PVs are hazardous waste. Who pays the ecological costs to dispose of them?
- Who pays the financial bill to dispose of solar PV systems at their end-of-usable-life? If you’ve got a large-scale solar facility, did your county commissioners require the corporation to post a bond so that if/when it goes bankrupt, your county doesn’t pay that financial bill?
- After a solar facility’s waste has been removed, how/will the land be restored?
- From cradles-to-graves, who is qualified to evaluate solar PVs’ ecological soundness? Should the expert carry liability for their evaluation? Should consumers require a cradle-to-grave evaluation from a liability-carrying expert before purchasing a solar PV system?
- Do solar PVs contribute to overshoot—using water, ores and other materials faster than the Earth can replenish them?
- If overshoot is a primary problem, and climate change, loss of wildlife species and pollution are consequences of overshoot, do we change our expectations of electric power, devices, appliances and the Internet?
- Can you name five unsustainable expectations about electric power?
- Can you name five sustainable expectations about electric power?
- In your region (defined by your watershed), who knows how to live sustainably?
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NOTE TO EDITORS: I tried to post the image I’ve got under “Featured Image,” but I did not get the option to “paste.” So, voila: Please note, I’ve added a caption: Who calls this clean?
Who calls this clean?