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.
Carbon costs are not break even. The monetary costs include all economic inputs including the dirty energy used to produce the panels. So even if 100% of the $1000 cost to create a panel was from burning coal, that means once the panel has generated $1k in electricity, it has recouped all the carbon output. Because the alternative to $1k in burning coal to make a solar panel is $1k in burning coal for electricity.
Solar takes 10 years to break even and lasts a minimum of 20 years. And 20 years it hasn't stopped working but is only outputting at worst 80% less power. There are 40 year old panels outputting 80% of what they did when new.
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).
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 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
I was referring to melting them down and using them for their base materials in wafer fabrication.