What Is the Energy Cost of Pollution?

This is an easy question to answer:  The energy cost of pollution is the energy cost of whatever has to be done to prevent pollution whether it be (i) the alteration of the process to avoid the pollution step, (ii) the decontamination and temperature normalization of process water for recycle or discharge, where the discharge of fresh water effluent to the  environment must be accompanied by the transport and desalination of sea water, (iii) the treatment of gas phase effluent to remove all contaminants such that only air and water at normal temperature is discharged.  The discharged air may be oxygen-rich provided it does NOT contain ozone, and (iv) whatever else must be done to prevent air, earth, and water pollution.

In cases where the process pollutes, the fine shall be sufficiently great that it is cheaper to prevent pollution than to pay the fine.  The fine shall be used to further the agenda of the most sincere environmentalists and to partly compensate the victims. Someone should implement some sort of plan to make it uneconomical to cheat.  Photovoltaic cells do not pollute, but the factory that makes them does.  It  is the responsibility of the purveyors of solar energy installations to make certain that their vendors and suppliers do not pollute and/or add the cost of the appropriate process equipment or the principal of the fine to the energy-invested term.