Do Solar Panels Use Coal

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.

Do solar panels use coal.

All the world s photovoltaic solar panels generate as much electricity as two coal power plants. There s the direct use of energy to manufacture and transport the panels and their components. 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. It is a porous carbon rich solid fuel made by coking coal in large slot ovens to drive out most of the volatile.

The equivalent of between 1 and 4 tons of coal are used in the manufacture of a single solar panel. 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. The very question insinuates that only manufacturing solar takes energy.

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. Metallurgical coke metcoke is a source of carbon for solar silicon smelting. 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.