I had to abandon my reading before I reached the end, I was too angry at the disgustingly sloppy referencing. In particular his second paragraph put me in a bad mood straight away:<p>> In order to fill these gaps, a storage solution or a backup infrastructure of fossil fuel power plants is required -- a factor that is often ignored when scientists investigate the sustainability of PV systems.<p>Um. Pardon? Either he's having an argument with himself, or he's reading some pretty lame journals. Or is he just confused? Let's see:<p>> Obviously, this strategy requires a backup of fossil fuel or nuclear power plants that step in when the supply of solar energy is low or nonexistent. To make a fair comparison with conventional grid electricity, including electricity generated by biomass, this "hidden" part of the solar PV system should also be taken into account. However, every single life cycle analyse of a solar PV ignores it. [3, 2].<p>Yeah, okay. That's a perfectly debatable paragraph. So let's see the science behind the claim: [2] has nothing to do with anything! It <i>addresses</i> energy storage, but is not <i>about</i> energy storage; and it does NOT claim to be a literature review, nor does it claim to reference "every single life cycle analysis". Am I missing something? Is this citation of "[3, 2]" supposed to represent the entire sum of human scientific knowledge on this matter? Am I an idiot? Surely I'm the idiot, I didn't waste my time reading this article - that point must be shooting straight over my head!<p>Okay, let's read the paper. It's on energy payback/cannibalism - a logical presentation from what I skimmed - but is absolutely focused on the energy life cycle analysis of a <i>whole technology</i> experiencing <i>rapid growth</i> - Eg. nuclear back in the day - whereby the energy invested to rapidly establish new technologies may be greater than or at least massively offset any efficiencies (or indeed, "zero emissions") they may have over existing (think "sunk cost") incumbent energy production.<p>Which has nothing to do with central thrust of this article which seems to be that we should point and laugh at all those idiot scientists who forgot that the sun disappears each night!<p>But this writing forgets one thing - who is saying that PV (or wind for that matter) can replace established baseload power generators in a 1:1 swap?<p>Nobody sane, that's for sure. So I'll give you a hint: it's electricity buyers. They don't give a damn that they're destroying the planet by using PV solar, the fundamental fact is that in countries like Australia, even though you seemingly can't swing a cat without tripping over high-grade thermal coal ideal for cheap power, we pay among the highest electricity rates in the world. It's that kind of corrupted and/or government-regulated inefficiency that is the only thing to blame for the fact that PV solar can compete at all, even when subsidies are withdrawn.<p>I can't keep reading.