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That's an advocacy report, reaching 90% by 2035 requires an awful lot of policy changes. Without any change the US will hit 55% by 2035. Also, I think advocacy

That's an advocacy report, reaching 90% by 2035 requires an awful lot of policy changes. Without any change the US will hit 55% by 2035. Also, I think advocacy groups tend to underestimate the obvious and not so obvious impacts an increasingly larger share of so-called clean power. I suggest we do not yet know the true cost of grid-scale battery, e-mobility battery, solar pv and wind because we have not yet reached the end-of-life for a statistically significant percentage of installed projects. “Solar photovoltaic (PV) deployment has grown at unprecedented rates since the early 2000s. As the global PV market increases, so will the volume of decommissioned PV panels, and large amounts of annual waste are anticipated by the early 2030s. Growing PV panel waste presents a new environmental challenge, but also unprecedented opportunities to create value and pursue new economic avenues.” https://www.irena.org/publications/2016/Jun/End-of-life-management-Solar-Photovoltaic-Panels https://www.irena.org/publications/2016/Jun/End-of-life-mana... “This report, prepared jointly by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and the International Energy Agency Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme (IEA-PVPS), is the first-ever projection of PV panel waste volumes to 2050. It highlights that recycling or repurposing solar PV panels at the end of their roughly 30-year lifetime can unlock an estimated stock of 78 million tonnes of raw materials and other valuable components globally by 2050. If fully injected back into the economy, the value of the recovered material could exceed USD 15 billion by 2050.” edit: here's a 2017 in depth EU sponsored study EU Commission: JRC Science for Policy Report – Materials Impact on the EU’s Competitiveness of the Renewable Energy, Storage and E-mobility Sectors – wind power, solar photovoltaic and battery technologies See section 6.1 "Recycling of materials from wind turbines, solar panels and batteries" https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC108356/jrc108356_report_competitiveness_online.pdf https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/J...

jakewins 6y ago
Agree, lots of unknowns ahead. My response was simply to the comment above asking for citations whether it is even technically possible to run the grid at such high penetration. Someone made the point that it's a rather daunting materials design challenge to make PV panels: They must withstand 30 years of water, heat, salt and UV light with no degradation, and then trivially separate into their constituent components at recycling time. We are definitely gearing up to create an enormous recycling headache 30 years from now.
corty 6y ago
The unknowns of ageing wind power are becoming visible here in Germany. There are stacks of wind turbine blades in some regions, waiting on a field for years to maybe be properly disposed of some day. Replacing old wind turbines is also a financial problem, without the higher-than-now subsidies of the past many aren't viable. So wind turbine parks are actually shrinking. One may see this as a positive, because it weeds out subsidy-driven inefficiency.
- aksss 6y ago
  What does proper disposal look like for a fiberglass, epoxy, and plastic construct like a turbine blade? I don’t get the impression that renewable tech is all that recyclable. It seems like we have the brains to be doing studies on the long term environmental impact of turbines and panels. I confess I haven’t looked too hard for this but I don’t see others posting them and imagine it’s not a very popular topic.

jakewins 6y ago

Agree, lots of unknowns ahead. My response was simply to the comment above asking for citations whether it is even technically possible to run the grid at such high penetration. Someone made the point that it's a rather daunting materials design challenge to make PV panels: They must withstand 30 years of water, heat, salt and UV light with no degradation, and then trivially separate into their constituent components at recycling time. We are definitely gearing up to create an enormous recycling headache 30 years from now.

corty 6y ago

The unknowns of ageing wind power are becoming visible here in Germany. There are stacks of wind turbine blades in some regions, waiting on a field for years to maybe be properly disposed of some day. Replacing old wind turbines is also a financial problem, without the higher-than-now subsidies of the past many aren't viable. So wind turbine parks are actually shrinking. One may see this as a positive, because it weeds out subsidy-driven inefficiency.

aksss 6y ago
What does proper disposal look like for a fiberglass, epoxy, and plastic construct like a turbine blade? I don’t get the impression that renewable tech is all that recyclable. It seems like we have the brains to be doing studies on the long term environmental impact of turbines and panels. I confess I haven’t looked too hard for this but I don’t see others posting them and imagine it’s not a very popular topic.