Do Solar Panels Use Coal

Thursday 13 august 2020 23 44 solar panels and wind turbines are on the up but coal usage must fall by 13 per cent around the world each year if we are to have a hope of hitting the targets of the.

Do solar panels use coal. That can add up fast and a lot of solar plants are using fuels like coal to generate the energy they need for activities like melting silicon. Although solar energy is a clean alternative to fossil fuels making the panels themselves can have a negative environmental impact. So looked at energy generation over time the land footprint of coal is at least 20 bigger than that of solar. It is a porous carbon rich solid fuel made by coking coal in large slot ovens to drive out most of the volatile.

The very question insinuates that only manufacturing solar takes energy. There s the direct use of energy to manufacture and transport the panels and their components. Furthermore you have to think about the energy debt involved in acquiring raw materials and converting them into the parts used to make solar panels. Not just the panels that make solar energy but the turbines and power stations and gas pipelines and railroads and railcars that make dirty energy they all take energy to make.

That all these 50 ton coal trucks these railroads these coal hauling railroad cars these coal power stations these turbines that turn coal into electricity are all somehow built by fairies. To make up the rest of coal s share with solar would require boosting the amount of electricity we get from solar about six fold to around 50 000 megawatthours per year. Workers install solar panels in california. Because solar doesn t have to move on to harvest sunlight in the space next door the way a coal mine must because mining depletes all the potential energy from each acre of land as it scoops up its coal.