On Mon, 8 Oct 2007 11:54:15 -0400 "George Adams" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
writes:
There is also a more long term kind of question I have never heard raised
but on a list like this it ought to be asked: what kinds of metals, and
inorganic materials go into these PV systems? In particular, when they
have
reached replacement or obsolescence age, will they be a disposal or
recycling burden such as our old computers and TV sets have become? Are
some PV technologies inherently more environmentally sound than others?
I
would assume disposal costs should be part of total life cycle and a
requisite part of the thinking if we really are all about sustainability.
In my view George is right - few people attempt the full energy
accounting to find out if so-called renewables like solar, or any other
'green' technology is really sustainable without oil. A most important
question in addition to the ones George asked is: How much oil does it
take to build and maintain an alternative energy source?
I think a true energy account will reveal that key processes of
constructing, delivering and maintaining alternative energy like wind or
solar on a scale that would replace much of current fossil fuel
consumption, require oil itself in large quantities. As an example, let's
take massive, centralized, grid-feeding wind electric, of which, on a
recent trip across Spain I saw many arrays across the landscape, each
bigger than the array we have in New York in Madison County. Unlike
electrical energy from wind, solar, or any other source, oil energy has
special properties (liquidity, high energy density) that are necessary to
do the heavy work of earth moving to prepare the sites, mine the raw
materials to make the big wind machines, forge the metal, make the
plastic parts, transport these monsters to the sites, and erect them, and
then do all that all over again to replace them when they wear out.
We are so used to an oil-dependent industrial infrastructure that it
become invisible and left out of our accounting when we consider what
technologies might facilitate our inevitable conversion to a non-oil
society.
Small, local energy alternatives for on-site energy use that use simple
technologies and materials and supply minimal needs, not the gross
overconsumption the industrial age is used to, might fare better by
comparison, in a total life cycle assessment of sustainability.
Karl North
Northland Sheep Dairy, Freetown, New York USA
www.geocities.com/northsheep/
"Mother Nature never farms without animals" - Albert Howard
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
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