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Comment by lwouis | Hacker News Reader

Solar power has all sorts of downsides when you start looking at who makes it, the complexity of the process, it's reliance on fossil fuel, its intermittence which brings up a whole new problem of mass scale storage, etc

Headlines like this make it seem like "some countries are making progress, why is anyone not following faster?".

Solar strikes me as a bad direction to go in. There is no magic want for energy that doesn't impact our environment. The most impactful, and actually sustainable approach is to reduce our usage of energy.

Ban crypto mining waste for instance. That's 10% of global electricity these days. That's a whole lot of power plants you suddenly don't have to build using "green" energy that's nothing but green.

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> the most impactful, and actually sustainable approach is to reduce our usage of energy.

Obvious yet hard do be heard in this.

Credit where it’s due though: the headline alone is (in a good way) surprising news considering how pro coal Australia is

It is testament to solar power that Australia has been able to achieve this given the decade of constant government sponsored FUD aimed at suppressing renewables whilst simultaneously actually encouraging, and attempting to provide financial backing for, new coal-fired power plants.

But how is it a good thing though. It's really not a simple "solar > coal". Solar has its own set of downside. And solar supply chain is heavy on fossil fuel right now, so you may have the same burning of coal behind the scene to make that solar energy. I've read reports where it was actually worse than directly burning the coal.

Some people wave solar and wind like it's some miracle no-impact tech. It's heavy duty tech that impacts the environment at every step of its lifecycle, and for which even CO2 emissions are not a clear winner once you look at the full picture.

And solar supply chain is heavy on fossil fuel right now, so you may have the same burning of coal behind the scene to make that solar energy. I've read reports where it was actually worse than directly burning the coal.

Those reports are incorrect. The energy payback time for a PV installation including structures, cabling etc is typically 2 years.

Reports that it’s worse than burning coal are ridiculous and incorrect. That wouldn’t have been true 10 years ago, and things are far better now. The carbon payback is months, and that will continue to reduce as more renewables are put in use (as the energy used to make panels themselves will be more and more from renewables). This will be the same with wind - first commercial steel made with green hydrogen (instead of coking coal) was delivered just this month. The development of that will have exciting consequences.

> Ban crypto mining waste for instance.

Yes ...

> That's 10% of global electricity these days.

No, this isn't true at all. Although if it was it would make the ban more urgent.

How is photovoltaics reliant on fossil fuels? Reducing electricity use sure is important but has its limits. Photovoltaics and wind are the cheapest way to produce that electricity in a clean way.

> How is photovoltaics reliant on fossil fuels

https://www.onlynaturalenergy.com/the-true-carbon-footprint-...

> The production of photovoltaic panels still has an important carbon footprint and creates a series of waste, liquid and gaseous by-products that are harmful to the environment.

Even with the old data in https://susproc.jrc.ec.europa.eu/product-bureau/sites/defaul...

This is getting better and better, with lower carbon footprint each new generation. With payback times as low as 4 months, this is misleadingly true.

I advise you look into the manufacturing process of these panels. Then how they end up after they stop working. This is not a sustainable loop for multiple reasons. Some of them even have a clear negative energy output today as it takes more energy to make them than they'll produce in their lifetime.

It's not enough to look at the things from when you receive them. You have to account for how it's produced, and sustainable are the parts

Where are you getting negative EROI numbers for solar from? That would certainly point to significant pricing failures.

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