Impact Of Solar Panels On Environment Scholarly Articles

A pv solar panel with a 30 watt capacity used to generate electricity using a pc.

Impact of solar panels on environment scholarly articles.

The potential environmental impacts associated with solar power land use and habitat loss water use and the use of hazardous materials in manufacturing can vary greatly depending on the technology which includes two broad categories. Key arguments against solar panels are that they require more energy and fossil fuel burning equipment to mine manufacture and transport than they save. The sun provides a tremendous resource for generating clean and sustainable electricity without toxic pollution or global warming emissions. This might not be an issue in some places but in arid locations such as deserts it can become a major problem.

Solar panels can take up large chunks of desert previously used by a host of wildlife from pronghorns and tortoises to coyotes and rattlesnakes. Worse rainwater can wash many of these toxics out of the fragments of solar modules over time. Photovoltaic pv solar cells or concentrating solar thermal plants csp. Solar and wind energy are often looked at uncritically by environmental proponents.

The environmental impacts of solar panels are widely discussed and commented on but what arguments are valid and what is social media noise. However solar energy as all other processes involves some adverse and detrimental effects on the environment and well being of the human populace and other organisms in the environment. Water consumption can have even more environmental impacts. Fabricating the panels requires caustic chemicals such as sodium hydroxide and hydrofluoric acid and the process uses water as well as electricity the production of which emits greenhouse gases.

Any type of energy comes with some cost to the environment though and solar and wind energy is no different. Using solar energy can have a positive indirect effect on the environment when solar energy replaces or reduces the use of other energy sources that have larger effects on the environment. Solar energy systems power plants do not produce air pollution water pollution or greenhouse gases. They also contain lead cadmium and other toxic even carcinogenic chemicals that cannot be removed without breaking apart the entire panel.

A water supply installed as part of a solar panel installation. Bats and birds are killed every year by wind turbines. Iea solar heating cooling shc program environmental impacts from the solar energy technologies. The impact of this is a reduction in the availability of fresh water.