Any time someone brings this up I wonder if they're financed by the fossil fuel industry as it's just such a weird point to make.
First: consider the alternatives: Every form of energy has an environmental cost associated with it. Surely we agree that while not perfect, PV is vastly superior in this regard to gas/coal/oil? It might even be less polluting than nuclear, but it's early here and I'm too tired to research this.
Second: PV modules have a very long life span. At least 20 years. After that time, they'll probably be operating still, but at maybe 60-80% of peak performance. That's probably not good enough for commercial use, but I built myself a nice little garden shed solar array using "old" modules because they were basically free and I don't care that much about peak performance in my use case. That's to say, these things can still be used for a long time.
Third: if they ever do need to be completely recycled, well, that's doable. In the EU, it's actually compulsory. The processes are there, although they don't quite scale yet. That's mainly because there's just not that many old modules to recycle yet.
sooo with all that going on, what exactly are you basing your point on?
It doesn't have to be paid shills directly. In many cases, the fossil fuel industry just seeds the information through "think" tanks and opinion columns and useful idiots spread it around from there.
No it's not lol, how would any form of energy production not generate materials that would be wasted. It's actually a laughably bad point.
Ofc we could decrease our energy consumption, but that's not what the point was.
I'm not against renewable energy, but it would be nich if there was a plan for recycling large amounts of old and broken solar panels if their adoption keeps accelerating
Are you new to the concept of breaking things? Jesus fuck. Photovolatic panels are already top 5 biggest contributors to ewaste. Please remove your head from your ass. It's nuclear or nothing.
Lmao I prefer renewable energy over coal and oil but the morons like you who idolize it while ignoring the fact it's creating insane amounts of waste is what pisses me off. You need to constantly ignore the downsides of green energy because if you didn't you'd quickly see how fucking awful it is. The only green energy I want is nuclear. I don't give a shit if it's fission or fusion, it's nuke or nothing babe.
The ewaste from photovoltaic cells is already at a billion kilograms. A billion. They're not being recycled properly, just like plastic bottles, fuckheads dump them in the garbage. So no, fuck solar and fuck wind, both aren't worth the massive amounts of garbage they produce. I'll say it until my dying breath, solar and wind are not the fucking answer to climate change. Stop celebrating them.