Chris Greacen

Planet of the Humans sets up renewable energy as a strawman, and then uses misleading facts that are selected out of context to make his case. The question should not be, "can solar panels and wind turbines solve everything?" but rather, "is renewable energy a better alternative than the coal and natural gas that it offsets?". Regarding the misleading statements -- to just take a few examples: (1) He quotes a product vendor as saying "some solar panels are only designed to last 10 years". Silicon wafer-based (monocrystalline or polycrystalline) cells make up 99% of solar panels used in power applications last many decades. Anecdotally, I have a solar panel built in the early 1980s that is in use at my home powering a ventilation fan, and its output is more or less what it was when I bought it used in 1989. The solar panels that provide more than 100% of the electricity for our home were installed in 2007, now 13 years ago. There has been no problems with these, no noticeable decrease in power (we monitor it monthly). Serious studies of PV degradation have come up with a median figure of 0.5% per year. At this rate, after 20 years, a 300 watt solar panel drops in power output to 267 watts. Far from toxic waste at that point -- probably ready to go another 20 years. (2) The film chides Apple for saying they get 100% of their electricity from renewable energy by noting that there are still power lines that go to their facilities. So what? These are not contradictory. If your solar panels inject into the grid more electricity than your facility uses, it's reasonable to say that 100% of your electricity comes from renewables. (3) The film claims multiple times that renewable energy technologies take so much energy to make that you'd be better off just burning the fossil fuel. This is just flat wrong. As of 2005, rooftop solar electric system have an energy payback period of 1 to 4 years and with more efficient production and higher cell efficiencies are even higher now. He takes potshots at biomass because a biomass plant that he surreptitiously films burns trees. Some do, some don't. And it's not always bad to burn trees. In much of the West our forests would be healthier and have a lot less fire hazard if some second and third-growth trees were thinned, keeping healthy ones. We've had 100 years of forest mismanagement that focused too much on fighting forest fires, leaving our forests as tinderboxes. In Thailand most sugar mills have biomass cogeneration powered by mountains of bagasse left over from crushing sugar cane. These power plants create both the steam and heat used to process sugar, as well as generate enough electricity to shut down four or five large coal power plants. Left to pile up, bagasse is a fire hazard that needs to be carefully managed to avoid self combustion. (4) Electric cars are chided for being powered by fossil fuel power plants. OK -- some are. But even so, they produce lower emissions per mile than gasoline engines. A modern gas CCGT plant is around 53% efficient. Gasoline engines around 20%. Even accounting for electrical transmission losses and battery charge/discharge efficiency electric cars are more efficient. Emissions are also a lot easier to control at a single point source than tens of thousands of tailpipes. At a time when we need to be seriously thinking about a green stimulus package, this film undermines the scientific case for this by mudding the waters with lots of nonsense.