Although China may be cheaper than Europe at producing solar panels, it comes at a higher cost to the environment, a new study says. Weaker environmental standards and more highly polluting sources of energy used by Chinese manufacturers are the reasons for the discrepancy, according to research by Northwestern University and the United States Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory. Researchers from the Illinois-based institutions looked at the carbon footprint and energy usage of making solar panels. Their analysis tallied the costs at every step of production, including mining raw materials, transportation and the factory’s power supply. The environmental cost of Chinese-made solar panels is about twice that of those made in Europe, said Fengqi You, a corresponding author of the paper, which will be published in next month’s issue of the journal Solar Energy. “While it might be an economically attractive option to move solar panel manufacturing from […]