The True Cost of Radical Environmentalism & ‘Renewable’ Energy

14,000 Abandoned Wind Turbines Litter the United States ...

Why are the Greens and politicians so blind to the true costs of the radical environmentalism they promote?

For renewables such as wind and solar, to get the same energy production as we have now, we would need cover very large areas of the land surface with them. Is that even sane?

When the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining, countries with no ‘fossil fuel’ or nuclear generating capability would have frequent or extended power blackouts, as has happened in Australia twice in the last 18 months, and here in the UK a couple weeks ago.

Wind farms and solar panels have a life of around 20-25 years before they need replacing, and if the world had lost it’s industry due to ‘de-carbonisation’, when these wind farms and solar panels fail or reach the end of their lives, there would be no manufacturing capability to repair or replace them, so when the last ones ceased operation, countries would be left with no electricity whatsoever, and would have effectively reverted to pre-1800 technology.

The Global Warming Policy Forum published an article in early February 2019 which dismisses the idea that grid-scale electricity storage can help bring about a UK renewables revolution. According to the paper’s author, Professor Jack Ponton; an emeritus professor of engineering from the University of Edinburgh, current approaches are either technically inadequate or commercially unviable.

Many commentators have suggested that intermittent power from wind turbines could simply be balanced with batteries or pumped hydro storage, but as Professor Ponton explains, this approach is unlikely to be viable as the environmentalists are even opposed to hydroelectric schemes. “You need storage to deal with lulls in wind generation that can last for several days, so the amount required would be impracticably large. And because this would only be required intermittently, its capital cost could probably never be recovered”.

Professor Ponton also thinks that another potential saviour of the renewables revolution – hydrogen storage – has been unjustifiably hyped: “A major problem with hydrogen is its low volumetric energy density. The only practical way of storing the large volumes required would be in underground caverns or depleted gasfields. We are already short of this type of storage for winter supplies of natural gas.”

Professor Ponton concludes that a lack of suitable storage technologies means that intermittent renewables cannot replace coal, gas and nuclear power and so a sensible energy policy cannot be based on them. “Wind and solar power are not available on demand and there are no technologies to make them so. Refusing to face these inconvenient facts poses a serious threat to our energy security”.

The International Renewable ENergy Agency (IRENA) in 2016 estimated there was about 250,000 metric tonnes of solar panel waste in the world at the end of that year. IRENA projected that this amount could reach 78 million metric tonnes by 2050.

Solar panels often contain lead, cadmium, and other toxic chemicals that cannot be removed without breaking apart the entire panel. “Approximately 90{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of most PV modules are made up of glass,” notes San Jose State environmental studies professor Dustin Mulvaney. “However, this glass often cannot be recycled as float glass due to impurities. Common problematic impurities in glass include plastics, lead, cadmium and antimony.”

Researchers with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) undertook a study for U.S. solar-owning utilities to plan for end-of-life and concluded that solar panel “disposal in regular landfills [is] not recommended in case modules break and toxic materials leach into the soil” and so “disposal is potentially a major issue.” California is in the process of determining how to divert solar panels from landfills, which is where they currently go, at the end of their life.

California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), which is implementing the new regulations, held a meeting last August with solar and waste industry representatives to discuss how to deal with the issue of solar waste. At the meeting, the representatives from industry and DTSC all acknowledged how difficult it would be to test to determine whether a solar panel being removed would be classified as hazardous waste or not.

The fact that cadmium can be washed out of solar modules by rainwater is increasingly a concern for local environmentalists like the Concerned Citizens of Fawn Lake in Virginia, where a 6,350 acre solar farm to partly power Microsoft data centers is being proposed.

It is estimated there would be 100,000 pounds of cadmium contained in the 1.8 million panels of the proposed Microsoft project, and leaching from broken panels damaged during natural events – hail storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and at decommissioning is a big concern.

There is real-world precedent for this concern. A tornado in 2015 broke 200,000 solar modules at southern California solar farm Desert Sunlight. “Any modules that were broken into small bits of glass had to be swept from the ground,” Mulvaney explained, “so lots of rocks and dirt got mixed in that would not work in recycling plants that are designed to take modules. These were the cadmium-based modules that failed [hazardous] waste tests, so were treated at a [hazardous] waste facility.”

When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September 2018, the nation’s second largest solar farm, responsible for 40 percent of the island’s solar energy, had most of its’ array destroyed, as seen in the photograph below

Nations will need to maintain 100{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of their current fossil fuel, hydro and nuclear power plants in full working order as backups, for the days when the Sun isn’t shining and there is no wind. If they did not have properly maintained and available backups on such days, there would be no electricity at all.

In November 2017, the Canadian organisation Friends of Science produced this Youtube video, which details the working lives of wind farms – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3dhuuG9DFk

On March 26th this year, the Manhattan Institute published the following article:-

Hydrocarbons – oil, natural gas, and coal – are the world’s principal energy resource today and will continue to be so in the foreseeable future. Wind turbines, solar arrays, and batteries, meanwhile, constitute a small source of energy, and physics dictates that they will remain so. Meanwhile, there is simply no possibility that the world is undergoing, or can undergo, a near-term transition to a ‘new energy economy’.

A movement has been growing for decades to replace hydrocarbons, which collectively supply 84{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the world’s energy. It began with the fear that we were running out of oil. That fear has since migrated to the belief that, because of climate change and other environmental concerns, society can no longer tolerate burning oil, natural gas, and coal – all of which have turned out to be abundant. So far, wind, solar, and batteries, the favored alternatives to hydrocarbons, provide about 2{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the world’s energy and 3{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of America’s.

Nonetheless, a bold new claim has gained popularity: that we’re on the cusp of a tech-driven energy revolution that not only can, but inevitably will, rapidly replace all hydrocarbons. This ‘new energy economy’ rests on the belief, a centerpiece of the Green New Deal and other similar proposals both here and in Europe, that the technologies of wind and solar power and battery storage are undergoing the kind of disruption experienced in computing and communications, dramatically lowering costs and increasing efficiency.

But this core analogy glosses over profound differences, grounded in physics, between systems that produce energy and those that produce information. In the world of people, cars, planes, and factories, increases in consumption, speed, or carrying capacity cause hardware to expand, not shrink. The energy needed to move a ton of people, heat a ton of steel or silicon, or grow a ton of food is determined by properties of nature whose boundaries are set by laws of gravity, inertia, friction, mass, and thermodynamics, not clever software.

This paper highlights the physics of energy to illustrate why there is no possibility that the world is undergoing, or can undergo, a near-term transition to a “new energy economy.” Among the reasons:

  • Scientists have yet to discover, and entrepreneurs have yet to invent, anything as remarkable as hydrocarbons in terms of the combination of low-cost, high-energy density, stability, safety, and portability. In practical terms, this means that spending $1 million on utility-scale wind turbines, or solar panels will each, over 30 years of operation, produce about 50 million kilowatt-hours (kWh), while an equivalent $1 million spent on a shale rig produces enough natural gas over 30 years to generate over 300 million kWh.

  • Solar technologies have improved greatly and will continue to become cheaper and more efficient, but the era of 10-fold gains is over. The physics boundary for silicon photovoltaic cells; the Shockley-Queisser Limit, is a maximum conversion of 34{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of photons into electrons; the best commercial technology today is 26{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}.

  • Wind power technology has also improved greatly, but here, too, no 10-fold gains are left. The physics boundary for a wind turbine, the Betz Limit, is a maximum capture of 60{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of kinetic energy in moving air; commercial turbines today are around 40{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}.

  • The annual output of Tesla’s Gigafactory, the world’s largest battery factory, could store three minutes’ worth of annual U.S. electricity demand. It would require 1,000 years of production to make enough batteries for two days’ worth of U.S. electricity demand. Meanwhile, 50–100 pounds of materials are mined, moved, and processed for every pound of battery produced.

If the world were to fully ‘decarbonise’ into the proffered emission-free utopian fantasy, it would require the complete shut-down of industry across the planet. Where would these Tesla batteries, new solar panels and new wind turbines, or any parts for them, be made then?

The true cost of radical environmentalism

In early July 2019, the website wattsupwiththat carried a long article by guest writer By Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng. I have only included the introduction and conclusion here for space considerations, but the full article can be read by copying the weblink after the conclusion.

  1. Introduction.

Ever wonder why extremists attack honest scientists who oppose global warming and climate change hysteria? Ever wonder why climate extremists refuse to debate the science? It is because global warming and climate change alarmism was never about the science – it was always a false narrative, a smokescreen for the totalitarian objectives of the extreme left.

The novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, written by George Orwell in 1949, foresaw a time “when much of the world has fallen victim to perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, historical negationism and propaganda”. It now appears that Orwell had remarkable foresight. Here is the real ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, an interview that year with ex-KGB officer and Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov, who described their long-term program to ideologically undermine the western democracies. It is all about manipulating the “useful idiots” – the pro-Soviet leftists within the democracies.

One commenter wrote: “this is crazy, almost everything predicted by this guy is already happening.” Bernie Sanders, AOC and other socialist-Democrats are openly saying what Bezmenov predicted decades ago. The last democracies are under attack by leftist extremists. All over the world, countries that once had a future have fallen into dictatorship, poverty and misery. It is notable that of the ~167 large countries in the world, most are totalitarian states, and all but “the chosen few” citizens of these countries suffer under brutal leftist dictatorships.

Radical greens have used wildly exaggerated stories of runaway global warming and climate change to stampede the gullible, in order to achieve their political objectives. The greens claim to be pro-environment, but their policies have done enormous environmental damage. Radical greens have also been destructive to humanity, causing millions of deaths. I wrote recently:

“Modern Green Death probably started with the 1972-2002 effective ban of DDT, which caused global deaths from malaria to increase from about 1 million to almost two million per year. Most of these deaths were children under five in sub-Saharan Africa…”

“…radical greens (really radical leftists) are the great killers of our time. Now the greens are blinding and killing babies by opposing golden rice…”

“The Green movement is really a smokescreen for the old Marxists – and they are the great killers of our age.”

To understand radical green objectives, see http://www.green-agenda.com/, excerpted below:

  • “In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
    – Club of Rome, “The First Global Revolution” p. 71,75 1993, consultants to the United Nations
  • “We need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
    – Prof. Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports
  • “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized nations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
    – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme
  • “The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing.”
    – Christopher Manes, Earth First!
  • “A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.”
    – Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies, author of The Population Bomb
  • “In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day.”
    – Jacques Cousteau, from a 1991 interview with the UNESCO Courier
  • “No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
    – Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
  • “I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.”
    – John Davis, editor of Earth First!
  • “We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”
    – Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation
  • “If you haven’t given voluntary human extinction much thought before, the idea of a world with no people in it may seem strange. But, if you give it a chance, I think you might agree that the extinction of Homo Sapiens would mean survival or millions, if not billions, of Earth-dwelling species. Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on Earth – social and environmental.”
    – Ingrid Newkirk, former President of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
  • “The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society, which is nature’s proper steward and society’s only hope.”
    – David Brower, first Executive Director of the Sierra Club, founder of Friends of the Earth
  1. Conclusion

Radical green extremists have cost society trillions of dollars and many millions of lives. Banning DDT and radical green opposition to golden rice blinded and killed tens of millions of children. Green energy and CO2 abatement schemes, driven by false fears of catastrophic global warming, have severely damaged the environment and have squandered trillions of dollars of scarce global resources that should have been allocated to serve the real, immediate needs of humanity. Properly allocated, these wasted funds might have ended malaria and world hunger.

The number of shattered lives caused by radical-green activism rivals the death tolls of the great killers of the 20th Century – Stalin, Hitler and Mao – radical greens advocate similar extreme-left totalitarian policies and are indifferent to their resulting environmental damage and human suffering… … and if unchecked, radical environmentalism will cost us our freedom.

The full article can be read here:-

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/07/04/the-cost-to-society-of-radical-environmentalism/?fbclid=IwAR2mOBZVspivurY2qcDC58OamyPLUzYyc89Yo57u9lCQquWjpa5gki72U3c


[1] Lowell D Stott et al 2019 Environ. Res. Lett. 14 025007, ‘Hydrothermal carbon release to the ocean and atmosphere from the eastern equatorial Pacific during the last glacial termination,’ https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aafe28/pdf


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Comments (9)

  • Avatar

    John Doran

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    Excellent, thank you.

    Modern “Environmentalism” is for depopulation, de-industrialisation & the enslavement of the remnants of Mankind to the multi-billionaire 1%s pushing these Satanic agendas.

    A rather excellent work which explores these themes at book length is PhD nuclear engineer Robert Zubrin’s Merchants Of Despair

    John Doran.

    Reply

  • Avatar

    Andy Rowlands

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    Thanks for your kind words John, much appreciated. I’ve heard of that book Merchants of Despair, I shall have to look it up.

    Reply

  • Avatar

    Tom O

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    It always amazes and amuses me to read statements made by people that mankind should be wiped from the face of the Earth “for GAIA.” Oddly, though, I never see their names in the papers as having suicided in the furtherance of their beliefs.

    Reply

    • Avatar

      Andy Rowlands

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      Exactly Tom, I’ve noticed that too. Everyone else can get rid of themselves but not them.

      Reply

      • Avatar

        Matt

        |

        Hypocrisy is a beautiful thing.

        Reply

    • Avatar

      Andy Rowlands

      |

      Cheers Jerry, I’ll have a look at those links.

      Reply

  • Avatar

    Robert Beatty

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    I am amazed that these crazy renewable systems are allowed to connect directly to our main grid supply – and on a priority connection basis!
    Surely the logical system would be to use them for pumping water to a hydro storage location. That water could be salt or fresh, and could be released through a generator to supply electricity as and when required – not just when the wind or sun operate.
    On top of that, we need wind turbines that do not generate sub sonic noise, or chop up avian life. See ‘Wind into Wine’ at Wind Into Wine

    Reply

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