There's a widely-held belief that the energy cost of PV production is largely outweighed the benefits from PV usage.

This may have been somewhat more true in the past, but I believe the energy payback period is now less than 24 months, on a PV device that should last over 20 years.

We must pay attention to weighing up the relative costs to environmental destruction by one cause (production and disposal of PV) against its most common alternative (continued fossil fuel usage).