Associated Press= SAN FRANCISCO (AP) —
Homeowners on the hunt for sparkling solar panels are lured by ads filled with
images of pristine landscapes and bright sunshine, and words about the
technology's benefits for the environment — and the wallet.
What customers may not know is that
there's a dirtier side.
While solar is a far less polluting
energy source than coal or natural gas, many panel makers are nevertheless
grappling with a hazardous waste problem. Fueled partly by billions in
government incentives, the industry is creating millions of solar panels each
year and, in the process, millions of pounds of polluted sludge and
contaminated water.
To dispose of the material, the
companies must transport it by truck or rail far from their own plants to waste
facilities hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of miles away.
The fossil fuels used to transport that
waste, experts say, is not typically considered in calculating solar's carbon footprint,
giving scientists and consumers who use the measurement to gauge a product's
impact on global warming the impression that solar is cleaner than it is.
After installing a solar panel,
"it would take one to three months of generating electricity to pay off
the energy invested in driving those hazardous waste emissions out of
state," said Dustin Mulvaney, a San Jose State University environmental
studies professor who conducts carbon footprint analyses of solar, biofuel and
natural gas production.
The waste from manufacturing has raised
concerns within the industry, which fears that the problem, if left unchecked,
could undermine solar's green image at a time when companies are facing stiff
competition from each other and from low-cost panel manufacturers from China
and elsewhere.
"We want to take the lessons
learned from electronics and semiconductor industries (about pollution) and get
ahead of some of these problems," said John Smirnow, vice president for
trade and competitiveness at the nearly 500-member Solar Energy Industries
Association.
The increase in solar hazardous waste
is directly related to the industry's fast growth over the past five years —
even with solar business moving to China rapidly, the U.S. was a net exporter
of solar products by $2 billion in 2010, the last year of data available. The
nation was even a net exporter to China.
New companies often send hazardous
waste out of their plants because they have not yet invested in on-site
treatment equipment, which allows them to recycle some waste.
Nowhere is the waste issue more evident
than in California, where landmark regulations approved in the 1970s require
industrial plants like solar panel makers to report the amount of hazardous
materials they produce, and where they send it. California leads the consumer
solar market in the U.S. — which doubled overall both in 2010 and 2011.
The Associated Press compiled a list of
41 solar makers in the state, which included the top companies based on market
data, and startups. In response to an AP records request, the California
Department of Toxic Substances Control provided data that showed 17 of them
reported waste, while the remaining did not.
The same level of federal data does not
exist.
The state records show the 17
companies, which had 44 manufacturing facilities in California, produced 46.5
million pounds of sludge and contaminated water from 2007 through the first
half of 2011. Roughly 97 percent of it was taken to hazardous waste facilities
throughout the state, but more than 1.4 million pounds were transported to nine
other states: Arkansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Rhode Island, Nevada, Washington,
Utah, New Mexico and Arizona.
Several solar energy experts said they
have not calculated the industry's total waste and were surprised at what the
records showed.
Solyndra, the now-defunct solar company
that received $535 million in guaranteed federal loans, reported producing
about 12.5 million pounds of hazardous waste, much of it carcinogenic
cadmium-contaminated water, which was sent to waste facilities from 2007
through mid-2011.
Before the company went bankrupt,
leading to increased scrutiny of the solar industry and political fallout for
President Barack Obama's administration, Solyndra said it created 100
megawatts-worth of solar panels, enough to power 100,000 homes.
The records also show several other
Silicon Valley solar facilities created millions of pounds of toxic waste
without selling a single solar panel, while they were developing their
technology or fine-tuning their production.
While much of the waste produced is
considered toxic, there was no evidence it has harmed human health.
The vast majority of solar companies
that generated hazardous waste in California have not been cited for
waste-related pollution violations, although three had minor violations on
file.
In many cases, a toxic sludge is
created when metals and other toxins are removed from water used in the
manufacturing process. If a company doesn't have its own treatment equipment,
then it will send contaminated water to be stored at an approved dump.
According to scientists who conduct
so-called "life cycle analysis" for solar, the transport of waste is
not currently being factored into the carbon footprint score, which measures
the amount of greenhouse gases produced when making a product.
Life cycle analysts add up all the
global warming pollution that goes into making a certain product — from the
mining needed for components to the exhaust from diesel trucks used to
transport waste and materials. Not factoring the hazardous waste transport into
solar's carbon footprint is an obvious oversight, analysts said.
"The greenhouse gas emissions
associated with transporting this waste is not insignificant," Mulvaney
said.
Mulvaney noted that shipping, for
example, 6.2 million pounds of waste by heavy-duty tractor-trailer from
Fremont, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay area, to a site 1,800 miles away
could add 5 percent to a particular product's carbon footprint.
Such scores are important because they
provide transparency to government and consumers into just how environmentally
sustainable specific products are and lay out a choice between one company's
technology and another's.
The roughly 20-year life of a solar
panel still makes it some of the cleanest energy technology currently
available. Producing solar is still significantly cleaner than fossil fuels.
Energy derived from natural gas and coal-fired power plants, for example,
creates more than 10 times more hazardous waste than the same energy created by
a solar panel, according to Mulvaney.
The U.S. solar industry said it is
reporting its waste, and sending it to approved storage facilities — thus
keeping it out of the nation's air and water. A coal-fired power plant, in
contrast, sends mercury, cadmium and other toxins directly into the air, which
pollutes water and land around the facility.
"Having this stuff go to ...
hazardous waste sites, that's what you want to have happen," said Adam
Browning, executive director of the Vote Solar Initiative, a solar advocacy
group.
Environmental advocates say the solar
industry needs greater transparency, which is getting more complicated as
manufacturing moves from the U.S. and Europe to less regulated places such as
China and Malaysia.
The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, a
watchdog group created in 1982 in response to severe environmental problems
associated with the valley's electronics industry, is now trying to keep the
solar industry from making similar mistakes through a voluntary waste reporting
"scorecard." So far, only 14 of 114 companies contacted have replied.
Those 14 were larger firms that comprised 51-percent of the solar market share.
"We find the overall industry
response rate to our request for environmental information to be pretty dismal
for an industry that is considered 'green,'" the group's executive
director, Sheila Davis, said in an email.
While there are no specific industry
standards, Smirnow, head of the solar industry association, is spearheading a
voluntary program of environmental responsibility. So far, only seven of the
group's nearly 81 manufacturers have signed the pledge.
"We want (our program) to be more
demanding, but this is a young industry and right now manufacturing companies
are focused on survival," he said.