this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
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You know I've really come around to solarpunk as a concept.
I used to genuinely be against solar because the carbon costs barely break even, but the very simple point was made to me that solar panels are an ideal ore for making solar panels -- meaning the carbon costs of solar panels goes down once we start recycling them. Add the independence solar panels give people (that punk aspect), and yeah I dig it.
Just FYI: The claim that solar panels barely break even in regards of carbon is misinformation:
https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/factcheck/solar/index.html#section-solar-farms-pump-out-more-carbon-over-their-lifetimes-than-they-save
And since most solar panels are produced in China and China is rapidly building clean energy, that will also go down further in the future. Solar is great.
The owners of my family's last house left us with solar panels, and as a struggling barely middle class family, it helped my parents afford all our expenses; from groceries to rent and even a vacation. It makes me so happy to see solarpunk become so popular, the good it can do is nothing short of awesome.
Can you point me to a study saying carbon cost barely breaks even? Compared to what?
I'm not gonna pretend to be an expert. I can't even find the graph I saw -- much less verify its integrity. If you're really curious, I can tell you I once saw a bar graph that had fossil fuels (or maybe it was just coal) as very negative, then solar as barely breaking even, then wind or maybe it was hydro electric as more positive, and nuclear as very very positive. I don't really want to defend the graph because I can't even find it to check the axes.
I will say my undergrad was in material science (actually "nanoscience" but basically material science), and there seemed a lot of semi-open corruption in wafer fabrication (or maybe it was just between Andrew Cuomo and CNSE). I was never really clear on the details, but it made me quite skeptical of anything associated with that field. Life-time is actually one of the big points as the economics teacher I had in undergrad said most solar panels are tossed well before they reach their supposed lifespans -- again, I don't know if that's actually true.
To be honest, as I've gotten older the independence aspect of solar panels has been what's appealed to me more than the environmentalism. Not to say I don't care about the environment. Just that I don't think green energy is going to be adopted in time to solve the problem, and carbon capture is obvious BS unless it's biologically based (went into structural biology in grad school, so the biology is closer to my expertise).
Can you clarify how the recycling works? We had BP solar panels and after 6-7 years they all cracked (the crystalline silicon couldn't handle the sun or heat) and stopped working
If they cracked, your installer may have fucked up. You need to leave a gap between panels because they expand with humidity and heat, kinda like flooring.
They were installed correctly and BP said they were faulty. They offered to replace them if an NDA was signed