[ben_w]

Right now I would say that all of those points are true but also misleading.

The first unit of PV that you build in an all-coal economy will necessarily be a very CO2-intensive manufacturing process; a unit of PV made in a PV-only (electric mining equipment also) economy will have none.

The power output of that first particular unit can supply enough energy over its lifetime to build between 10 and 60 more of the same unit depending on which estimates I use for lifetime and energy cost per unit.

China is heavily dominated by coal, I think just under 2% PV by actual generation? So yes, very dirty. But their growth over the last decade was about x670, more than enough to turn the dirty production green in the next decade. (Far too much even for that, which is why I think their rates of increase have gone down in the last few years).