The Invenergy solar array is made up of 323,000 panels spanned across 640 acres. | Adobe Stock
The Invenergy solar array is made up of 323,000 panels spanned across 640 acres. | Adobe Stock
It's all "sun and games" in Las Vegas after MGM Resorts International completed a 100-megawatt solar array project in the desert north of the city on June 28. Or is it?
Chicago-based Invenergy developed the array near Las Vegas to provide daytime power to 13 MGM resorts in the city, the Las Vegas Sun reported.
Made up of 323,000 panels organized across 640 acres, the system can produce enough energy to power the equivalent of 27,000 homes annually, Invenergy said in a statement.
Invenergy operates the solar farm and owns 25% while a company controlled by American Electric Power Inc. owns the remainder.
Although solar panels don't discharge global warming emissions, there are still emissions that are attached to the building and maintaining of the dynamo. Forbes argued June 21 that solar panels produce 300 times more toxic waste than high-level waste from nuclear power plants. Used solar panels are shipped to sub-Saharan landfills in Africa, rather than being safely stored away from the public, which can be highly dangerous for developing countries where trash-scavenging is common.
A Harvard Business Review study found that waste produced by solar panels will make solar energy four times more expensive than was previously assumed. The study estimates “by 2035, discarded panels will outweigh new units sold by 2.56 times.” The researchers write that “If early replacements occur as predicted by our statistical model,” solar panels “can produce 50 times more waste in just four years than [International Renewable Energy Agency] IRENA anticipates.”
The Harvard Business Review study also found that the explosion of solar energy in recent years has occurred in large part due to government subsidies and tax credits, such as the solar investment tax credit, rather than efficiency. The solar investment tax credit currently covers the cost of 26% of solar-related expenses.
According to the Forbes columnist, some critics acknowledge that the recycling and disposal of solar panels is an issue but not an urgent matter like that of climate change.
He responded, "The idea that humankind should turn our gaze away from urgent problems like genocide, toxic waste, and land use impacts because they complicate longer-term concerns is precisely the kind of unsustainable thinking that allowed the world to become dependent on toxic solar genocide panels in the first place."
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