Could the U.S. Significantly Reduce Its Yearly Emission of CO2 By Covering Its Rooftops With Photovoltaic Solar Panels? #2

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “Could the U.S. Significantly Reduce Its Yearly Emission of CO2 By Covering Its Rooftops With Photovoltaic Solar Panels? #2” [Hake (2012b)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: In a previous post “Concentration of Energy by Photovoltaic Solar Panels” [Hake (2012a) I posed the following “Fermi Problem”:

“What fraction ‘f’ of the yearly total U.S. fossil-fueled electrical energy (and thus fraction of yearly tons of CO2 emission from U.S. fossil-fueled electrical energy production) could be eliminated if all rooftops in the U.S. were covered by photovoltaic solar panels?”

In this post I estimate f = 1.1 - considerably larger than the estimate f = 0.08 of MathEdCC’s Guy Brandenburg. Perhaps others would like to consider this problem.

In Hake (2012a) I warned (paraphrasing): “Before recommending that all U.S. rooftops be covered with Photovoltaic Solar Panels one should consider the EMERGY associated with such a plan. Odum wrote: “EMERGY measures both the work of nature and that of humans in generating products and services. . . . The photovoltaic power grid at Austin, Tex., evaluated by King & Schmandt (1991), is taking more EMERGY out of society than it is generating.”

So is the motto of Solar Forward http://solarforward.com/: “SAVING THE PLANET, ONE SOLAR SYSTEM AT A TIME” a deception? I THINK NOT because the evaluation of King & Schmandt (1991), failed to consider the devastating decrease in EMERGY due to global warming if the world’s dependence on fossil fuels is not reduced.
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To access the complete 18 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/zT7dKj.

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands
President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References
which Recognize the Invention of the Internet (PEDARRII)

rrhake@earthlink.net
http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake
http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi
http://HakesEdStuff.blogspot.com
http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake


REFERENCES [URL’s shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 10 Feb 2012.]
Hake, R.R. 2012a. “Concentration of Energy by Photovoltaic Solar Panels” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/wdkAoL. Post of 6 Feb 2012 09:59:03-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post were transmitted to several discussion lists and are also on my blog “Hake'sEdStuff” at http://bit.ly/Aimt1K with a provision for comments.

Hake, R.R. 2012b. “Could the U.S. Significantly Reduce Its Yearly Emission of CO2 By Covering Its Rooftops With Photovoltaic Panels? #2” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/zX0oHw. Post of 10 Feb 2012 13:43:02-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists.