I used to be really big on solar energy, putting panels on my house as well as a local school when I was on the school board. But that may all be for naught. There’s a new boogeyman in the world of global warming: Nitrogen Trifluoride
On Lubos Motls The Reference Frame he has as pointed out that a greenhouse gas emitted during the production of solar panels and HDTVs, nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) that is used for cleaning the electronics, is about 17,000 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
The concentration of NF3 in the atmosphere was artificially increased by a factor of 20 during the last two decades. The measurements of the concentration surpassed the previous estimates by a factor of five.
According to the Scripps Institute; ” the present 5,400 tons in the atmosphere…is on the rise at 11 percent per year” – that will stay there for 700+ years – creates the equivalent warming of all Finland’s CO2 emissions.
According to Lubos, given the fact that the solar panels produce about the same percentage of the global energy as Finland, it is reasonable to guess that the state-of-the-art solar panels that would replace fossil fuels would cause a comparable amount of warming per Joule as fossil fuels.
So let’s just say – everything causes global warming, and leave it at that.
For reference, I’ve listed some other common industrial gases below:
Global Warming Potentials Of Gases
(100 Year Time Horizon)
GAS GWP
========================
Carbon dioxide (CO2) 1
Methane (CH4) 23
Nitrous oxide (N2O) 296
Hydrofluorocarbons
HFC-23 12,000
HFC-125 3,400
HFC-134a 1,300
HFC-143a 4,300
HFC-152a 120
HFC-227ea 3,500
HFC-43-10mee 1,500
Fully Fluorinated Gases
SF6 22,200
CF4 5,700
C2F6 11,900
C4F10 8,600
C6F14 9,000
The concept of the global warming potential (GWP) was developed to compare the ability of each greenhouse gas to trap heat in the atmosphere relative to another gas. In this case, CO2 is the reference gas. Methane, for example, has a GWP of 23 over a 100-year period. This means that on a kilogram for kilogram basis, methane is 23 times more potent than CO2 over a 100-year period.
By definition, an electrical heater is 100% efficient. It is a resistance that transforms all the electricity into heat. The electricity transport and the rest of the house’s thermal insulation is never used in the calculation of the efficiency of the heating device.
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Therein lies the flaw in your thinking.
You made the claim that total CO2 production was less because your lights are 100% efficient at producing heat. (Assuming that all of the photons are eventually absorbed and turned into heat.)
You have to examine to total energy production path if you want to know the over all efficiency of your system. By ignoring much of this path, you may get the answer you want, but you will never get the right answer.
I use almost 100% solar energy for heating. Wood.
I burn wood for heat. Thereby releasing the imprisoned CO2 from older trees and allowing it to be reused by young trees to spur their growth. Which will eventually be cut down for fire wood, completing the cycle.
However, I don’t burn wood to keep my carbon footprint small. It is strictly economic. I have acres of trees and other than the labor and fuel to cut them down, I have basically ‘free’ heat. I pay local people to do the cutting, so I also stimulate the local economy at the same time.
My electric supply utility offers me the option of buying wind power (I am already mostly hydro-electric), but oddly they want me to pay MORE for this ‘free’ alternative energy (which is already getting a huge subsidy from the taxpayers).
Fee, Fly, Foe, Fam
I smell the scent of an taxin’ scam
We should not be to worried about the “power” of greenhouse gases.
Most of them are relative heavy and they will not reach the upper levels of our atmosphere.
There will be sufficient measures taken to contain gases released during manufacturing and recycling.
Other manufacturing technologies of solar panels (or units) do not have or will not have these problems.
Have a little trust in the future.
I am convinced that technology and common sense will overcome all the problems.
I am also convinced that solar will have a very big future.
Eventually it will make us completely independent from oil and nuclear.
It will also make us independant from the centrelised energy producers which I ragard as a kind of freedom.
It takes about 16 square meters of solar panels to produce the energy to make a car run 20.000 km/year.
Current panel technology already produces 50 times more energy per square meter compared to bio crops (except for oil produced by algae which we can use for aircraft)
Batteries and ultra capacitors are to become more powerful and light weight every day and prices will become compatible as soon as mass manufacturing takes off.
For heavy transport, trains and ships we can use hydrogen electric.
I am absolutely not a green loony but I am convinced that we eventual need an alternative for oil.
Oil is to precious to burn as a fuel.
Solar will do the job perfectly and as cheap as coal.
I also believe carbon dioxide emissions is a non existing problem and therefore I reject any sales argument of products limiting greenhouse gases.
It’s the biggest scam on earth and we should fight it. We should especially reject the government regulations and the caps & trade schemes that will only harm our economies and our personal liberties.
http://www.coolearthsolar.com/news
Well, internal combustionm engines produce CO2 as they go. In contrast, NF3 is only used during manufacturing process of solar panels, and only a small amount of it escapes into the atmosphere. Sure, “17,000 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide” sounds scary all right, and “twenty-fold increase in 20 years” even more so. But come on, amount of NF3 in the atmosphere during pre-industrial times was approximately zero (although apparently we can measure it using some super-sensitive equipment), and twenty times zero ain’t that much. By the way, NF3 is used to make most of the modern electronics, and using it for making solar panels at least reduces the need for oil and CO2 emmisions. Manufacturing of mobiles phones and computer chips also used NF3, but does not reduce CO2 emmisions, so here you go.
How on Earth are they measuring parts per trillion of ANYTHING in air? The testing labs I use as an environmental engineer are hesitant to report and result less than the ppm range. They can go to about 50 ppb for a yes/no answer, but that isn’t even accepted by the EPA because the test method isn’t approved yet. I call their procedure into question.
” Werner Weber (23:26:08) :
Why the GWP is so high:
Neither water molecules nor CO2 absorb near the maximum of the infrared radiation emitted from ground or from water at ambient temperatures. They leave open the so-called atmospheric window. Methane and other molecules absorb in the ‘atmospheric window’ thus reducing strongly the radiative heat transport into space, at clear skies. (Water droplets do absorb strongly at all relevant infrared wavelengths).
If such molecules have a long life in the atmosphere, they accumulate very much. CO2 has a lifespan of 50 years, methane of 10 years, N2O probably much shorter, some weeks, I guess, but all fluorines are very stable molecules and stay in the atmosphere for a very long time. ”
Well based on a global mean surface temperature of +15C,t eh surface infra-red radiation would be bounded by a black body radiation spectrum peaked at 10.1 microns. Ozone absorbs in the 9-10 micron range, and CO2 absorbs at somewhere between 14.7 and 15 microns depending on who’se data you can find. But practically due to pressure broadening and Doppler (temperature) broadening, CO2 absorbs from about 13 to about 16.5 microns. or about 13.75 to 16 if you take width at half height. Data from The Infr-Red Handbook shows CO2 and water as affecting the surface emitted radiation from 13 to 18 microns. The ozone peak is right slap on the peak of the emission for much of the globe and seasons.
But if you ignore the fictitious global mean temperature, and instead treat the real global surface tem[perature range from tropical desert highs of +60C (surface) to Vostock Antarctic winter night lows of -90C, then you find the suspectral emittance peak ranges from about 8.8 microns out to 15 microns at the coldest temperatures. So in the polar regions the CO2 peak is about right on the surface emission spectrum while at the desert highs, the CO2 effect is quite attenuated due to the Wien displacement of the emission peak.
Also in the case of CO2, it is the very ground level CO2 that is important, because that is where the pressure is highest, and the temperature is highest, so as you go up in altitude the CO2 absorption peak narrows around the intrinsic line width. The ozone peak, since it is a high altitude pollutant is a very much sharper absorption dip than CO2. Re-emission from CO2 spreads isotropically, so about half goes up, and half goes down, and the part that goes down is either reabsorbed by CO2 (or water) or hits the surface. the half that goes up, increasingly escapes further CO2 entrapment, sicne the temperature and pressure broadening are dropping, so the absorption line narrows with altitude.
Acocrding to NOAA official earth energy budget, the so called atmospheric window only allows about 10% of the surface emitted IR to escape to space, so that is the extent of the total extra greenhouse effect one could expect from more GHGs.
And the role of water is way underplayed. Water doesn’t mind evaporating from the ocean surfaces, but once removed from the surface by upward convection or winds; it simply hates to condense, unless there is a surface to condense on. That surface can be a dust particle, or a bacterium, or even a charge ion shower track caused by incoming ionising radiations, so the water vapor gets transported (along with 540 or so calories per gram of latent heat of evaporation) high into the troposphere. Eventually it gets cold enough and finds some method of nucleation to form water droplets (clouds) and thereby dump out its 540 calories per gram of energy, and eventually some oif it will get high enough to form ice crystals, and dump another 80 calories per gram of latent heat.
So the water cycle is the most potent energy transport mechanism for getting heat energy back out into space, other than direct electromagnetic radiation.
And when ANY sort of cloud moves in front of the sun; it ALWAYS cools down; it never heats up, so clouds of any form are a negative feedback factor.
It doesn’t matter that high clouds at night slow the cooling of the surface; that is last night’s weather; but the persistence of such clouds over climate time scales always results in cooling from solar radiation blockage or reflection (albedo).
[…] According to Lubos, given the fact that the solar panels produce about the same percentage of the global energy as Finland, it is reasonable to guess that the state-of-the-art solar panels that would replace fossil fuels would cause a comparable amount of warming per Joule as fossil fuels. […]
Ron de Haan: 16 square meters can power a car?
Midday you might get a bit over 3kw. For the whole day, perhaps 20 kwh. Assuming a wimp motor of just 20 hp (15 kw) and a battery efficiency of 75% energy in to energy out, you might get an hour of driving. Except on overcast days, then you walk or ride a bicycle.
Solar has it’s uses, particularly in remote locations or where small amounts of power are needed. Like weather stations, for example. When you consider the whole picture, producing the silicon, and some of the rather nasty chemicals used in poduction, NF3 being rather minor, the cost is a whole lot higher. Thermal solar, reflectors and making something hot, has less environmental downside. It still isn’t cost effective.
So does anyone out there understand what this means:- “The concept of the global warming potential (GWP) was developed to compare the ability of each greenhouse gas to trap heat in the atmosphere relative to another gas. In this case, CO2 is the reference gas. Methane, for example, has a GWP of 23 over a 100-year period. This means that on a kilogram for kilogram basis, methane is 23 times more potent than CO2 over a 100-year period. ”
For a start, there’s that 100 year period; what on earth does that have to do with anything. Does a CO2 molecule gradually lose its “potency”? Man, there’s an image for you ! One poor little old CO2 molecule just sitting there waiting for photons in the 40 to 240 millielectron Volt energy range to come along; well CO2 really only cares about the 75-90 meV range (no not MeV). Why would the molecule care about having to wait 100 years? Just what does time have to do with GHG molecular spectroscopy ?
Then there’s that Kilogram thing; that old slab of platinum.
Everybody quickly; what are the molecular weights of H2O, CO2, NF3, and SF6; and how many of each do you get for your kilogram; don’t GHG modellers understand about the periodic table and the concept of molecules.
So who out there has a preferred value for the NF3 capture crossection for 40-240 meV photons.
We moved all of our silicon fab foundry stuff out of the building, so I am still trying to find a fab engineer to find out what they used to use NF3 for; my guess is it is used in plasma etching processes. Certainly if it is so stable, it wouldn’t seem to me to be a good wet chemical reagent for anything.
But back to the atmosphere where the July 1 2008 abundance of NF3 was reliably put at 0.454ppt That’s a dry-air mole fraction for those interested. See they have to ignore the water vapor, even though it is typically one percent of the atmosphere. Well I’ll stick with the dry air, but not forget the water.
Now I’ve been involved in some high purity chemicals (by the multikilograms) I used to work in a building containing enough Arsenic to poison every living thing (that doesn’t love the stuff) in the known universe; and that stuff was good stuff; seven nines purity; that’s 99.99999 % pure Arsenic, and we had around the same amount of seven nines pure Gallium; the French quicksilver. It had to be that clean to let us grow good infra red Gallium Arsenide single crystals to make IR photodiodes, or use as substrates to make red GaAsP LED epitaxial material (ancient technology now).
So if NF3 were the ONLY atmospheric GHG, the air would be 99.9999999999546 pure. That air is 200,000 times more pure, than the very best semiconductor raw materials we were ever able to get out hands on. Well maybe you can get eight nines pure stuff these days.
I’m still inshock wondering why the GWPs are not based on per molecule comparisons; so it will take me some time to recover my senses, and figure out what that really is.
So just what does this potency mean; and does anybody know what modes of resonance oscillations are active in the 40-240 meV range in Nitrogen Trifluoride. The molecule looks supsiciously like ammonia which is tetrahedral, and it is well known that ammonia has a resonance where the nitrogen atom, pops up and down through the middle of the plane of hydrogen atoms, to invert the tetrahedron; and it does that at a microwave frequency that was used as the basis of the first practical Atomic clock.
Given that NF3 is 17.000 times more potent per century per kilogram at levels 200,000 times more pure than the best semiconductor high purity chemicals; you would think that the President of The United States would have decreed a National emergency, and instructed every Government or Government funded R&D agency or lab to divert their entire budgets to determining that molecular absorption spectrum of NF3, and determining the capture crossections over the infrared range from 40-240 meV; maybe over the solar spectrum as well.
Sounds like panic time to me.
I have the paper from the chap at Scripps, mentioned in the article, but drew a blank form the chief hoincho there on the spectrum; ho hum, maybe someone will get around to looking at this new devil gas.
Just a link to express some optimism about the future of solar cells. They will be cheap and ubiqutous one day. And, maybe, we can even get rid of that nasty NF3:
nanosolar
Anne (15:22:26),
Care to tell us what materials are used to make Nanosolar’s panels?
Link gave me an error Anne.
But good luck on that “cheap” thing there. Cheap for whom; certainly not the taxpayers who pay for the government subsidies for these “Cheap” solar panels.
Why is it Anne, that none of the solar panel manufactureres ever talk about their efficiency; a number that will vary throughout the day, as the solar spectrum at the surface changes form sun up to sun down.
How about efficiency in terms of how long does a modern production solar panel have to run, generating electricity, to recover all the energy that went into all the materials from their raw state till the panel was installed and making free electricity to the grid. And how does that energy capital time compare to the mean time to failure of a modern solar panel ?
Well just asking; it would be nice to know if we gain energy or lose energy in this transaction.
NASA may be able to afford the cost of “cheap” triple junction solar cells that may get 30% efficiency, because weight to them is gold in the bank; but down to earth real actual energy users can’t afford such things.
I’ve heard of solar cells that you can paint onto a sheet of mild steel, with a paint roller; dirt cheap so they say; but they don’t often say, how much solar electricity they can make during an average day in an average location.
Let’s all get ready for the next bubble to burst; the solar and renewable green energy bubble. My IRA, and 401K investment managers, have specific instructions to not invest one brass razoo of my hard earned retirement funds on anything that even smells or sounds like renewable green energy or hydrogen or any other scotch mist program.
John M (16:59:59) :
Care to tell us what materials are used to make Nanosolar’s panels?
I’ll trade that information for the recipe of Coca Cola.
George E. Smith (12:05:36) :
Cheap for whom; certainly not the taxpayers who pay for the government subsidies for these “Cheap” solar panels.
Yep, there’s subsidy going in there too. My superficial research indicated it is $ 25 m on a total private funding of $ 500 m. So there are some capitalists putting large amounts of money in that company. I wonder why. They’re probably stupid.
Why is it Anne, that none of the solar panel manufacturers ever talk about their efficiency; a number that will vary throughout the day, as the solar spectrum at the surface changes form sun up to sun down.
I am stunned by this remark. All manufacturers publish the efficiency of their panels. And it can be verified very easily. Solar panels are expensive things, bought by people measuring every watt hour coming out. Any panel not meeting the specs will be promptly returned with a complaint.
The total amount of energy produced from a solar panel in Germany (~50 degrees latitude) is 800 Wh per year per watt peak. So a 200W solar panel will produce around 160 kWh per year when pointing south at an inclination of 30 degrees. The best commercially available solar panels have an efficiency of a little over 20%. Efficiency by the way is not a very important measure, price per watt peak is the most important one. Nanosolar claims its panels are 14% efficient.
How about efficiency in terms of how long does a modern production solar panel have to run, generating electricity
Somewhere between 1 and 4 years, depending on type and location. href=”http://jupiter.clarion.edu/~jpearce/Papers/netenergy.pdf”>Here is a paper. Google for ‘energy payback solar panels’ to find more information.
Let’s all get ready for the next bubble to burst;
You bet there will be a bubble and you bet it will burst. Did the the dot com bubble prove the internet was not such a good idea?
Anne (16:24:47)
What a cute way of saying:
“I have no clue, I just wanna believe…”
John M (05:27:09) :
Any arguments?
John M (05:27:09) :
A stupid question deserves a stupid answer, sorry. Nanosolar is understandably very protective of their intellectual property. So nobody on earth apart from a small group of researchers could answer your question.
Of course have no clue, why should I? I can predict that the next generation of Intel CPU’s will be at least twice as fast as the current one, without having a clue how they pull it off. Does that make me a believer too?
If investors are prepared to put $ 500 million in this company, then as a believer, I am in good company.
Anne,
Here’s a clue.
Try googling: nanosolar CIGS.
There’s only about 18000 hits.
Note that I asked you what the panels are made of, not the blueprint for their factory and their recipes and operating procedures.
Since you think NF3 is “nasty”, I’m just wondering what you think of the “S” in CIGS.
solar cells will probably never be cheap enough for the small amout of power they sometimes produce. The real potential is in mass solar-thermal plants which combine higher efficiency energy conversion with energy storage. Still shouldn’t be employed until it’s economically viable…