What is the energy, pollutant and carbon payback time of solar panels.?

There's an old paper floating around that you can find by Googling "nrel energy payback". At least, the consumer summary of the study will come up. You can then pursue the original paper. That's from about 10 years ago, and suggests an energy payback of 1 to 4 years, depending on the type of panel. We assume photovoltaic panels, of course. Additionally, the National Renewable Energy Labs could be a good source for finding other papers.

If you are at a University or large Corporation, ask your librarian for help.

I was at the Engineers for a Sustainable World conference a couple years back, and one of the presenters pointed out the fact that carbon payback time depends on the source of energy used to produce the panels, and the source of electricity that the panels are displacing. For example, it takes a certain number of kWh to produce a kg of aluminum for the frame. If the electricity came from a coal-burning plant, the carbon content is high. If it came from hydroelectric, the carbon content is nil.

Intersolar in San Francisco this year had a similar talk from last years event concerning the same question.

The answer is about 4 years, although the goal is to get it around 1 year. There are also the carbon offset values for the inverters. Some inverter manufacturers offset their own production- SMA Solar Technology AG in Germany does just that. They have the world's largest inverter plant and it is carbon neutral.

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