Rated “among the cleanest vehicles sold in the United States” by the US Environmental Protection Agency, we all seem to know someone who owns a Prius. While simultaneously, the hype of the need to utilize our natural gift of sunlight with solar panels as a way to create a cleaner environment is constant. Green energy is described to us as completely natural and the way of America’s future.
But really, how clean are these options?
The media and publicity proclaim all the great benefits of using solar panels. They endorse the simplicity, the CO2 reduction from using solar cells, and the long-term economic return. There is never anything negative said about solar panels. But like all other energy-consuming technology, there are cons to this new energy source.
Solar panels are known for their expensive initial cost, but overtime will supposedly pay for themselves. Most would believe the panels themselves are what cost the most, but there is also the cost for warranty, materials, repair, labor and installation, expenses that don’t just disappear after solar technology is installed. The typical ten-kilowatt solar system has a lifespan about five to eight years, a cost of about $8,000 to replace.
But what about the energy used to create solar panels? The manufacturing process is actually a huge contributor to the emissions of greenhouse gases. Some of the gases produced while making these solar panels, like C2F6, are twelve thousand times more potent than the notorious CO2 and is completely produced by humans. In the process of manufacturing a product to reduce CO2 emissions, we are producing a gas even more gruesome.
The sun is a great energy resource. But in America, our location doesn’t allow for consistent usable sunlight. We aren’t able to harness enough sunlight to completely use solar technology for our energy consumption. Solar panels then can not even completely use all the energy it takes in and turn it into electricity. The efficiency rate for most solar panels is between 10-20%.
While Prius vehicles are the most popular hybrid car, it seems all alternative-energy vehicles are looked upon as being green. Instead of being powered by just petroleum like any standard car, electric cars and hybrids can be fueled by coal, nuclear power, or lithium. While the idea of charging up the car may seem nice, that battery still costs to replace, operate, and still uses fundamentally “ungreen” energy. In driving a clean vehicle, we achieve a sense that we are doing good for the environment. When comparing a hybrid car to a standard gas driven car, the hybrid car is obviously cleaner, less noisy, and not as high of an emitter. But when we have this sense of being green, we may end up driving more or choose to drive somewhere nearby when it could have easily been walked or biked. The chief of the UK Royal Society of Chemistry, Richard Pike, states “fully adopting electric cars would only reduce Britain’s CO2 emissions by 2 percent due to the country’s electric utility fuel mix” (Zehner 143). While the cars may emit no gas, there is still CO2 being produced in the process.
Solar panels and electric cars give us the sense we are using clean energy, but the underlying fact is, we are still consuming energy. The green technologies allow us to feel could about consuming and producing, falsely allowing us to use more.
I can’t argue that these new technologies have good intentions and may be able to be improved to someday be completely efficient, but they currently are not sustainable. We wouldn’t be able to survive on solar panel energy alone due to the amount of energy we consume in America. Maybe these technologies can be successful, if we would understand it may not be a technology shortcoming but our consumer mentality.
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