Editor,
Last week’s article on climate change made it clear that business-as-usual is not an option. However, a number of people were especially disturbed by the claim that solar panels are worse than coal-fired power plants when it comes to releases of carbon dioxide (CO2).
Well before the threat of SWEPCO’s transmission line some of us depended on solar panels for most, if not all, of our electricity. While the entire community focused on stopping SWEPCO’s misbegotten plan, the number of solar power systems was growing fast. Carroll County Electric Cooperative reports show that its customers with grid-tied solar power systems increased at a rate of almost 40 percent per year during 2009-2014. Since 2013, local teams have installed more than 600 solar panels in this area. Has all of this been taking us in the wrong direction?
No, we were right all along. Solar panels are about 20 times more climate-friendly than coal-fired power plants. Many studies have found that the quantity of CO2 and other greenhouse gases produced per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated that can be attributed to coal-fired power plants is about 20 times greater than that for solar panels. In these studies, the entire lifecycle of the two systems was taken into consideration – extraction of raw materials for making solar panels and constructing coal-fired power plants, production of the panels and construction of the two systems, and the operation of both systems.
Pat Costner