Weebit - 2022 and beyond, page-1200

Well I completely agree with your comment that "Graphene solar panels are much better use than burning coal". I am not saying that graphene is not useful, for solar panels or in other applications, but rather that there is so little involved in any specific use case that a single bucket full of coal would be enough to make a vast amount of solar panels. It is the unique properties of 2D carbon structure in moving electrons that gives it those properties, not the quantity used. If I owned a coal mine I would not be excited if I heard an announcement that the entire Australian outback was going to be covered in coal-derived graphene solar panels. I'd happily contribute a couple of bucketfuls - free!

Your comment that the silicon in sand is not recyclable is not really informative in this context. I have not looked into it lately but I do believe that mono or polycrystalline silicon could be recycled readily to make new solar panels. It's the purity that matters. Just melt it down and regrow the crystals. That saves the expensive process of purifying silicon dioxide with multiple impurities into super-pure silicon.

I cannot agree with your comment "The less solar panels needed the better." The economic advantages of solar farms generating electricity are now so clear that they are taking off everywhere. My understanding is that a 1MW of solar panel capacity covers around 1 hectare of land, and cost efficiency is getting better all the time. I think Australia could comfortably devote a few thousand hectares of desert to generating a few thousand MW of electricity with zero CO2 emissions!