14 DAY TRIAL // In a new paper set to be published in July's issue of the journal Solar Energy, specialists with the Northwestern University and the Department of Energy in the United States argue that Europe's solar panels are greener than China's.
What the researchers mean to say is not that, through some sort of magic, the power generated by solar panels up and running across the European Union's member states is cleaner than the one produced by solar panels operating in China.
What they wish to draw attention to is the fact that, according to evidence at hand, the business of manufacturing solar panels is more sustainable and consequently more environmentally friendly in Europe than it is in China, EurekAlert informs.
More precisely, it appears that manufacturing processes in China use more energy and have a higher carbon footprint that those in Europe. Hence, the resulting solar panels can be argued not to be as eco-friendly as people assume them to be.
“We estimated that a solar panel's carbon footprint is about twice as high when made in China and used in Europe, compared to those locally made and used in Europe,” says Fengqi You, study author and chemical and biological engineering specialist.
Besides, it appears that, given the fact that they burn more energy while being manufactured, solar panels made in China need to work about 20-30% longer and harder to produce enough clean power to make up for the energy that went into making them in the first place.
In light of these findings, the specialists behind this study argue that, while it may be true that, financially speaking, it makes a whole lot of sense to make solar panels for the European market in China, it would be best if folks living in member states were to stick to locally produced solar panels.
“While it might be an economically attractive option to move solar panel manufacturing from Europe to China, it is actually less sustainable from the life cycle energy and environmental perspective – especially under the motivation of using solar panels for a more sustainable future,” Fengqi You explains.
As detailed in the paper expected to soon be published in the journal Solar Energy, the claim that making solar panels is a greener business in Europe than it is in China is based on information collected while carrying out a so-called life-cycle analysis for several such sets of photovoltaic modules.
Long story short, the researchers looked at the energy needed to mine the material required to make solar panels, at the amount of fuel used to transport both these materials and the resulting products, and also at the energy requirements of processing factories.