Facebook: Raphael Telis Physicist at BNL and CERN. June 7, 2020
Wind and Solar – Not Really Renewable One of the most widespread myths is that wind and solar power sources are inexhaustible because the wind will always blow and the sun will always shine. This statement assumes that all that is needed for energy is wind and sunshine, which isn’t the case. Wind and sunshine don't equal wind power and solar power. The transformation into renewable energy requires minerals, metals and fossil fuels, which are non-renewable resources. Thus, wind turbines and solar panels are largely made from non-renewable resources. Take a note: "renewable energy" isn't a technical or scientific term but a marketing term. Wind turbines and solar panels requires a variety of metals – such as copper, cobalt, iron, aluminum, gallium, lead, tin, cadmium, chromium, indium, lithium, nickel, manganese, zinc, molybdenum, silver and rare earths (dysprosium, neodymium, praseodymium, terbium, europium and yttrium) – not to mention other materials, such as concrete, glass/fiberglass, plastic, graphite, quartz, silicon, boron, phosphorus, tellurium and selenium. Heavy industries like steel, aluminum, concrete, glass, and plastics are heavy users of fossil fuels and have heavy carbon footprints. The rate of deployment of wind turbines and solar panels is expected to increase rapidly, and the demand of raw materials is expected to increase as well, in some cases potentially exceeding the current availability. 1
In addition, an examination of the life cycle of producing wind and solar energy reveals that it requires machinery that is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Large trucks bring steel and other raw materials to the site, earth-moving equipment beats a path to otherwise inaccessible high ground, large cranes erect the structures, and all these machines burn diesel fuel. Wind turbines and solar panels are basically pure embodiments of fossil fuels. Nuclear needs a mere fraction of the steel, aluminum, copper, concrete, glass and plastic required for the same energy output from solar or wind. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has made some calculations. Nuclear requires 160 tons of steel for each TWh produced, while wind requires 1,800 tons and solar requires 7,900 tons to produce the same amount of power. It's the same with many other materials, e.g. plastic (nuclear requires 0 tons, wind requires 190 tons and solar requires 210 tons); concrete (nuclear requires 760 tons, wind requires 8,000 tons and solar requires 350 tons); glass (nuclear requires 0 tons, wind requires 92 tons and solar requires 2,700 tons); aluminum (nuclear requires 0 tons, wind requires 35 tons and solar requires 680 tons); copper (nuclear requires 3 tons, wind requires 23 tons and solar requires 850 tons), etc. While people are up in arms about nuclear waste, only very few seem to be concerned about the concept of wind waste and solar waste. Wind turbines and solar panels will eventually wear out and must be decommissioned, generating millions of tons of waste. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the worldwide solar panel waste is estimated to reach around 78 million tons by 2050, while the University of Cambridge estimates wind turbine blades will generate 43 million tons of waste by 2050. And most countries don't have an adequate plan for safely disposing of this often toxic waste, while its pile is growing steadily. Until now, there are no state-of-the-art technologies to recycle them. Another problem is the intermittency of wind and solar. Some renewable energy advocates would like to believe that intermittent generation doesn't matter, but they're wrong. The high penetration of wind and solar cause system regulation (flexibility) problems and system adequacy (capacity balance) problems. Because of the need to produce electricity when the wind and the sun are not blowing or shining adequately, other power sources, often natural gas plants, must be turned on and off – and ramped up or down – when required. However, the challenges and costs of balancing a grid by keeping natural gas plants idling so they can be brought online always result in the suboptimal utilization of expensive assets – in other words, greater wear-and-tear and maintenance costs, and unnecessary additional CO2 emissions. Thus, wind and solar aren't so clean or low carbon as their advocates claim. US DOE, "Quadrennial Technology Review: An Assessment of Energy Technologies and Research Opportunities" 2
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/09/f26/Quadrennial-TechnologyReview-2015_0.pdf IRENA, "End-Of-life Management: Solar Photovoltaic Panels" https://www.irena.org//media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2016/IRENA_IEAPVPS_End-ofLife_Solar_PV_Panels_2016.pdf University of Cambridge, "Wind Turbine Blade Waste in 2050" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28215972/
Many cement plants are needed to build hundreds of thousands of wind turbine towers for “renewable” wind energy around the world
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Molten Aluminum Refining Plant – Adtech China
Flour Copper Mill, Teck Highland Valley
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