Building 1 GW of solar capacity is not clean.
It requires around 18.5 tons of silver.
3,400 tons of polysilicon.
And more than 10,000 tons of aluminum.
Producing the polysilicon alone consumes thousands of tons of quartz, coal, petroleum, coke, charcoal, and wood chips.
Refining the silver for 1 GW uses roughly 4,600 megawatt hours of electricity, the annual power use of 400 U.S. homes.
Producing the aluminum consumes nearly 2 million gigajoules of energy, enough to power more than 100,000 households for a year.
Solar power is built with massive fossil energy inputs. Only the output is labeled "green." These are the realities campaigners never want to talk about.