CFCs of the New Millenium

Who knew solar cells would kill Earth?

Talk about going against conventional wisdom. I came across this article today, from which the following excerpt is taken:

"Many of the newest solar panels are manufactured with a gas that is 17,000 times as potent as carbon dioxide in contributing to global warming. Nitrogen trifluoride, or NF₃, is used for cleaning microcircuits during the manufacture of a host of modern electronics, including flat-screen TVs, iPhones, computer chips -- and thin-film solar panels, the latest (and cheapest) generation of solar photovoltaics."

It goes on to say that the Environmental Protection Agency, thinking only 2 percent of NF₃ would ever make it to where it could do damage in the atmosphere, actually encouraged its use. Now I'm not a mathematician or a, um, atmosphere...chemist...guy (even though I use sciency graphics that I steal from Wikipedia), but it seems to me that even if 2 percent of this stuff made it up to the sky that's still 340 times as much damage as the junk that's spewed from the back of our cars' tailpipes. Surely I'm oversimplifying that logic, but still.

It's so unexpected, because solar energy was supposed to have absolutely no emissions or any other adverse effects. The problem was that they were just so expensive. This obviously doesn't help the viability of solar cells. And given our growing dependence on "modern electronics" whose manufacture also uses NF₃, maybe it's time to find another fancy compound to do this dirty work for us.

Don't look at me -- I'm just a simple-minded software developer...