Solar panels affect global climate less than greenhouse gas emissions
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.029351
Ars Technica : To see what the effects of large-scale solar installations might be on global climate, researchers from China and the US created several scenarios in which they covered large areas of Earth’s deserts with photovoltaic panels. They found that the deserts would cool by nearly 2 °C because of the amount of sunlight that gets absorbed and that urban areas would warm by more than 1 °C because of the heat released in the process of harvesting all that solar energy and its conversion to electricity. Although the researchers say that shifting temperatures due to the solar panels can also cause changes in regional and global wind and precipitation, “the potential global mean climate changes induced by the use of solar panels are small in comparison to the expected climate change owing to fossil fuel consumption.”
