3 Environment Impacts of Solar Energy

3 Environment Impacts of Solar Energy. The sun is a tremendous energy resource for generating sustainable and clean electricity without global warming emissions or toxic pollution. As a clean and green energy resource, solar energy has no global warming emissions released with electricity production. However, the emissions are released with other solar life-cycle staged such as manufacturing process, materials transportation, installation, maintenance, dismantlement and decommissioning.

The main environment impacts of solar energy come from solar panels production. Production of solar panels produces hazardous materials which are released during the manufacturing process into the air. It also produces waste water and consumes substantial amounts of energy.

Beside the use of hazardous materials in solar panels manufacturing process, the other impacts are land use and water use. These environment impacts associated with solar energy can vary greatly depending on its technology.

What Are The Environment Inpacts of Solar Energy

1. Land Use

The operation and construction of solar farms has an impact on the environment. The solar farm construction will affect existing land uses, such as agriculture, grazing and minerals production and also affects special recreation management or critical environmental concern areas.

The solar farm installation has to do with clearing large areas of land which in turn affects wildlife, native vegetation, ecological impacts, affect the drainage and the rainfall of a region. Depending on the location, larger solar facilities can raise concerns about habitat loss and land degradation. Total land area need varies depending on the topography of the site, the intensity of the solar resource and of course the solar energy technology.

Different with wind facilities, the solar project has less opportunity for sharing land with agricultural uses. The land impacts of solar systems can be minimized by locate them at lower-quality locations such as abandoned mining land, brownfields or existing transmission and transportation corridors. Smaller solar PV arrays have minimal land use impact. It can be built on commercial buildings or homes.

2. Water Use

Generating electricity from solar PV cells do not require water. But, during manufacturing processes, some water is needed to produce solar PV components. Concentrating solar thermal plants same with all thermal electric plants need water for cooling process. The water use will vary depend on plant location, plant design and type of cooling system.

Concentrated Solar Power plants which use wet-recirculating with cooling towers withdraw 600 to 650 gallons of water per megawatt-hour electricity produced. Meanwhile Concentrated Solar Power plants with once-through cooling have lower total water consumption and higher levels of water withdrawal. Dry-cooling technology will reduce water use at CSP plants about 90 percent. But, the tradeoffs to these water savings are lower efficiencies and higher costs. Also, at temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, dry-cooling technology is significantly less effective.

Central tower systems and parabolic troughs generate electricity by using steam plants and use water for cooling process. The increase of water demand can strain available water resources while the use of chemicals at solar facilities i.e. dielectric fluids, herbicides and dust suppressants could contaminate groundwater or surface and also impact air resources, water and soil

3. Hazardous Materials

The manufacturing process of photovoltaic associated with any hazardous materials which are used to purify and clean the semiconductor surface. These materials are used in the semiconductor industry such as nitric acid, hydrochloric acid, acetone, hydrogen fluoride, 1,1,1-trichloroethane and sulfuric acid. The type and amount of chemicals used depends on the size of silicon wafer, the amount of cleaning that is required and the type of cell.  Thin-film photovoltaic cells contain more toxic materials than those used in silicon photovoltaic cells, including cadmium-telluride, gallium arsenide and copper-indium-gallium-diselenide. If not disposed and handled properly, these materials could pose serious public health threats and environmental impacts.

Extra care must be taken to avoid accidental Tetrafluoromethane emissions  as well as solvents and other volatile organic compounds during manufacturing steps of panel i.e. isopropanol, fluoride nitrate, sulphur dioxide which is toxic to humans, carbon dioxide which effects global warming and solvents which are toxic to humans.

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