An unanswered question

From Why Everything They Said About Solar Was Wrong by Michael Shellenberger.  He is making an argument which is plausible but which I do not yet find convincing.  I don't dispute his factual assertions but I suspect that there is other evidence which runs counter to his thesis and which is being ignored.  Over time, I suspect his position will be proven correct but I haven't yet seen the full argument that supports that.  

I am, as so often happens, resorting to estimations based on argument structure to eke out some epistemic knowledge from a one sided argument and resorting to social considerations.

Shellenberger's argument is that in addition to hidden subsidies from government and unconsidered environmental impacts such as bird strikes, that alternate energy, and particularly solar panels, have much higher costs than are understood.  

Three years ago I published a long article at Forbes arguing that solar panels weren’t clean but in fact produced 300 times more toxic waste than high-level nuclear waste. But in contrast to nuclear waste, which is safely stored and never hurts anyone, solar panel waste risks exposing poor trash-pickers in sub-Saharan Africa. The reason was because it was so much cheaper to make new solar panels from raw materials than to recycle them, and would remain that way, given labor and energy costs.

My reporting was near-universally denounced. The most influential financial analyst of the solar industry called my article, “a fine example of 'prove RE [renewable energy] is terrible by linking lots of reports which don't actually support your point but do show that the RE industry in the West considers and documents its limited impacts extremely thoroughly.’” An energy analyst who is both pro-nuclear and pro-solar agreed with her, saying “I looked into this waste issue in the past and concur with [her].” 

The Guardian said solar panel waste was a “somewhat ironic concern from [me], a proponent of nuclear power, which has a rather bigger toxic waste problem” adding that “broken panels… are relatively rare except perhaps in the wake of a natural disaster like a hurricane or earthquake.” 

But when reporters eventually looked into the issue they came to the same conclusions I had. In 2019, The New York Times published a long article about toxic old solar panels and batteries causing “harm to people who scavenge recyclable materials by hand” in poor African communities. In 2020, Discover magazine confirmed that “it is often cheaper to discard them in landfills or send them to developing countries. As solar panels sit in dumps, the toxic metals they contain can leach out into the environment and possibly pose a public health hazard if they get into the groundwater supply.” 

Whenever you introduce taxes and subsidies as well as coercive policies into the marketplace, it becomes increasingly difficult to determine the real net cost and benefit.  This is not dissimilar to the introduction of high efficiency light bulbs some years ago and the increasing restriction of access to incandescents.  

Life averages for the early high efficiency bulbs were way overestimated.  The reduction in energy consumption was real.  The light quality of many of the early versions was abysmal.  Mercury in some of the high efficiency bulb was clearly an environmental costs not initially considered.

Here we are a decade or so later.  Were high efficiency bulbs a success?  I  don't know.  Coercive regulation suggests not.  Direct and indirect government subsidies at the beginning also muddies the water.  Improvement in light quality and in bulb life seems to have occurred.  My guess is that highe efficiency bulbs have indeed slightly reduced energy consumption at the margin and it is possible that they may have turned out to be a net good deal for the average consumer.  But I have seen no argument or evidence to that effect.  I don't know.

And that is the policy issue.  It is easy to do subsidies and coercive regulation to start a product on the road to the point of viability.  But frequently, viability is never reached.  In the great recession of 2008, many municipalities finally abandoned the chimera of urban recycling collections.  The subsidies were simply unaffordable with shrunken municipal budgets.  

Will solar and wind end up being in the category of unworkable ideas which end up costing (in money and in environmental damage) far more than they were supposed to?  It is a plausible argument and Shellenberger is putting some data on the table which suggests so.  

My personal guess is that he will end up being correct.  That there will not be a breakthrough moment where costs suddenly plummet, balancing the equation for whatever recycling costs end up being necessary.  Too early to say but subsidized and coercive policies always have to bear the burden of proof.  If people cannot be freely convinced of the value proposition, then there is a reasonable probability that there is actually no good value proposition.