Question: solar light CO2 production cost?

Hi all,

Does anyone know where I might info on the CO2 production costs of solar lights? There's lots of info on the offset, but I can't find anything on upstream production costs.

Thanks!

 

Maybe this? http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/03/the-ugly-side-o.html

"For rooftop and ground-base installations, the eco-friendliness can be good or doubtful, depending on the solar insolation and the life expectancy. But if we consider solar panels mounted on gadgets like laptops or mobile phones, solar energy becomes a plainly bad idea.

If we take a life expectancy of 3 years (already quite optimistic for most gadgets) and a solar insolation of 900 kWh/m² (quite optimistic too, since these things are not lying on a roof), the result is 1,038 gram CO2 per kWh in the worst case scenario (high-efficient mono-crystalline cells produced in the US). That means that it is better for the environment to power a gadget with electricity generated by coal, rather than by a solar panel."

 

This also brings up a point that I have often wondered about. What happens when solar panels become way more efficent and it becomes orders of magnitude better to use solar panels than fossil fuels?

Solar panels absorb the Sun's energy and convert it to electricity. What happens when that energy isn't used to say heat a local area and weather patterns change?

The same effect can be seen local to big wind turbine farms. They actually slow down the air currents that generate the electricity and cause local ecological changes.

Not that burning fossil fuels is any better