A naive question on the EROI of Solar Panel

Last year, I conducted personal research on solar panels, driven by a simple yet compelling question: "Are solar panels truly beneficial for the environment?"

This question could be distilled into a more simple problem statement: "Does the energy generated by a single solar panel suffice to produce at least one additional solar panel?" If this question could be answered affirmatively, I would have had no hesitation in committing all my resources to the widespread adoption of solar panels.

However, my research did not yield a definitive conclusion. This was because I encountered a fundamental challenge that made the calculation and evaluation practically impossible. Specifically, while solar panels generate electrical energy, their manufacturing process, under current technological and industrial conditions, requires other forms of energy.

Although energy, regardless of its form, is considered theoretically interchangeable and comparable within a unified framework, is it truly possible to equate different forms of energy in practice? This question shifted my perspective. Rather than focusing solely on energy "production" or "consumption", I realized that our attention should be directed towards energy "conversion."