Under thorough analysis, at least at present, photovoltaic (pv) electrical generation isn't really a "low impact" method.

The fossil fuel consumption to produce current pv panels - the fuels burned/consumed directly in the manufacturing process and burned to generate electrical power used during manufacture - now exceed the fuels that would need to be burned in reasonably efficient combustion generators to produce all the electrical energy that the panel will produce in 20 years of using the panel. (Twenty years use is the current "state of the art" lifetime of a typical pv panel under good conditions, according to manufacturers. They tend to be optimistic.)

The pollution at the point of use of the pv device is low, but to get that "clean application" now requires that "somewhere else" quite a lot of pollutants were produced, and a lot of conventional fuels were consumed. The net result is that widespread use of pv devices may actually cause more "global pollution" and fossil fuel consumption than conventional on-site generation with conventional methods for the same amount of energy.

People are working very hard at improving the efficiency of the solar/electric conversion of pv devices, and at reducing manufacturing cost (mfg. cost is proportional to, if not closely equivalent to, "fuel consumed to make"); but for the present, pv devices really are useful only where the cost of transporting the fuel to remote places would be excessive, or where no suitable fuels are available at any cost.

John