How Green Are Solar Panel‘s?
In September, 2011, riot police broke up a four-day protest in the village of Haining, in China’s Zhejiang province. Villagers had been complaining of increasingly worsening pollution from a local factory and staged the protest demanding government action.
Protestors overturned cars and stormed the compound of the offending factory that is accused of releasing toxins into a local river. Police response to the protest was swift and brutal but the protests were big enough and the message made clear enough that the government did end up closing the factory.
This story was widely reported by Western media sources but that the factory is operated by US owned Jinko Solar Inc. and produces photovoltaic solar panels is hardly mentioned.
Given the risks involved to participants in protesting in China’s political environment, and given that the government responded in a rare gesture of compliance to the public will by closing the factory. We need to ask the question how bad was the pollution to the river?
Everyone appreciates that once a solar panel is generating electricity from the sun it generates no environmentally harmful byproducts or side effects but what is actually in the production of the panels? What kind of powerful chemical pollutants are involved? What is the actual carbon footprint?
In short, how green are solar panels?
Post time: Feb-16-2017