How Much Co2 Is Released To Make A Solar Panel

Depending on your utility the co2 di.

How much co2 is released to make a solar panel.

According to the study a solar panel in sweden generates 50g of co2 per kwh so that is a total of 274 kg of co2 or 600 lbs of co2. This will displace electricity purchased from your utility. There aren t enough places to recycle old solar panels and there aren t enough defunct solar panels to make recycling them. Germany has added 30 000 wind turbines and millions of solar panels to a coal fired grid and its carbon dioxide gas emissions continue to rise and are magnitudes higher than its nuclear powered neighbour.

A 6 6kw solar system will produce around 10 600 kwh a year which will save around 10 6 tonnes of co2 emissions per year. The fact is that even solar power plants have an environmental footprint on a lifecycle basis. Making solar or photovoltaic cells requires potentially toxic heavy metals such as lead mercury and cadmium. The savings in co2 will vary from place to place and depend on many factors.

The standard way of calculating this is by using the average grid carbon intensity the average amount of co2 emitted for each kwh of electricity produced for the grid estimated at 445g co2 in 2013. 241 85 1000 0 94 257287 234 kwh units of electricity. Right now solar panel recycling suffers from a chicken or egg problem. The carbon footprint of a solar photovoltaic pv panel the average level of greenhouse gas emissions it is responsible for over its lifetime is about 72 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt hour of electricity generated gco2e kwh.

This figure irons out some big differences between coal power which emits a lot more carbon and nuclear power which emits a lot less. By scott cramer although the use of solar panels is green many solar panel manufacturing processes are not. It even produces greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide that contribute to global. Of electricity generated from conventional sources creates approximately 1kg of co2.

Taking into account the two years to pay off the embedded energy in the panel after 25 years a 6 6kw system will. But on average 1m2 of current design solar panels will produce about 0 5 kwh per day better in sunny places and worse in others.