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You forgot to mention China is also the world‘s leader in building new coal plants.

AtlasBarfed 6y ago
I don't particularly want to defend China, but at least they have contributed to the fundamental "victory" economics of solar being able to challenge natural gas. And yes they are totalitarian, but at least they have some awareness of GHG emissions and are executing on alternative energies and EV and battery production and research.
- gcheong 6y ago
  But at what true cost has this “victory” come at when we know China is more than willing to look the other way when it comes to the environmental costs of mining those resources at least in the short term. https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-wrestles-with-the-toxic-aftermath-of-rare-earth-mining https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-wrestles-with-the-toxic...
  - philipkglass 6y ago
    Solar panels don't need rare earth elements. Some wind turbine generators use rare earth element permanent magnets, but they only account for 21% of the market. The rest use electromagnets. See Figure 37 in this report: "IRENA Future of Wind (2019)" https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2019/Oct/IRENA_Future_of_wind_2019.pdf https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication...
    - gcheong 6y ago
      21% is rather significant if we're hoping to scale the installation of wind along with other renewables to entirely replace fossil fuels and nuclear. And of course there is just the regular mining of all the other resources needed to produce these renewables in the first place which might actually be the bigger problem in terms of scale. "Leading manufacturers of large modern wind turbines, such as Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy and MHI Vestas Offshore Wind, use permanent magnet generators based on neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) in their advanced offshore wind turbines. " https://thinkrcg.com/rare-earth-metals-and-their-role-in-renewable-energy-benefits-and-challenges/ https://thinkrcg.com/rare-earth-metals-and-their-role-in-ren...
      - philipkglass 6y ago
        Our present use of fossil fuels is vast. The effort required to replace fossil fuels will likewise be vast. It includes a lot more mining for metals used in electric vehicles, regardless of whether those vehicles are charged by nuclear electricity or by renewables. It appears technically feasible to scale up metal extraction to the necessary level. Metal extraction has negative environmental impacts, but the impacts of continuing to burn fossil fuels are worse.
        gcheong 6y ago
        Absolutely agree that we need to move off fossil fuels so that to me is a given. And you're right that the problem is vast and will require a vast effort. But that is also the central problem. Renewable prices are coming down due to economies of scale and possibly due to externalities not being fully captured in the price (my main concern) but overall installation at this point is relatively small so it's easy to overlook it because the current prices are so attractive. So the question becomes do these economies of scale hold as we scale up to the necessary levels to replace fossil fuels and nuclear or is there some inflection point where the cost to the environment becomes too great to ignore before we even get there and we find ourselves needing to scramble to build nuclear?
        Retric 6y ago
        Nuclear requires vastly more resources per kWh than wind, so we aren’t going to hit an inflection point where suddenly nuclear is better for the environment.
Retric 6y ago
That’s largely because Coal had fallen off a cliff almost everywhere else. China got 80% of it’s power from coal in 2010 and that’s down to 57.7% in 2019.
- HellDunkel 6y ago
  This paints a rather distorted picture. a) Coal plants did not fall off a cliff in western nations by accident and b) upcoming new coal plants in china are huge.

I don't particularly want to defend China, but at least they have contributed to the fundamental "victory" economics of solar being able to challenge natural gas. And yes they are totalitarian, but at least they have some awareness of GHG emissions and are executing on alternative energies and EV and battery production and research.

gcheong 6y ago
But at what true cost has this “victory” come at when we know China is more than willing to look the other way when it comes to the environmental costs of mining those resources at least in the short term. https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-wrestles-with-the-toxic-aftermath-of-rare-earth-mining https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-wrestles-with-the-toxic...
- philipkglass 6y ago
  Solar panels don't need rare earth elements. Some wind turbine generators use rare earth element permanent magnets, but they only account for 21% of the market. The rest use electromagnets. See Figure 37 in this report: "IRENA Future of Wind (2019)" https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2019/Oct/IRENA_Future_of_wind_2019.pdf https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication...
  - gcheong 6y ago
    21% is rather significant if we're hoping to scale the installation of wind along with other renewables to entirely replace fossil fuels and nuclear. And of course there is just the regular mining of all the other resources needed to produce these renewables in the first place which might actually be the bigger problem in terms of scale. "Leading manufacturers of large modern wind turbines, such as Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy and MHI Vestas Offshore Wind, use permanent magnet generators based on neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) in their advanced offshore wind turbines. " https://thinkrcg.com/rare-earth-metals-and-their-role-in-renewable-energy-benefits-and-challenges/ https://thinkrcg.com/rare-earth-metals-and-their-role-in-ren...
    - philipkglass 6y ago
      Our present use of fossil fuels is vast. The effort required to replace fossil fuels will likewise be vast. It includes a lot more mining for metals used in electric vehicles, regardless of whether those vehicles are charged by nuclear electricity or by renewables. It appears technically feasible to scale up metal extraction to the necessary level. Metal extraction has negative environmental impacts, but the impacts of continuing to burn fossil fuels are worse.
      - gcheong 6y ago
        Absolutely agree that we need to move off fossil fuels so that to me is a given. And you're right that the problem is vast and will require a vast effort. But that is also the central problem. Renewable prices are coming down due to economies of scale and possibly due to externalities not being fully captured in the price (my main concern) but overall installation at this point is relatively small so it's easy to overlook it because the current prices are so attractive. So the question becomes do these economies of scale hold as we scale up to the necessary levels to replace fossil fuels and nuclear or is there some inflection point where the cost to the environment becomes too great to ignore before we even get there and we find ourselves needing to scramble to build nuclear?
        Retric 6y ago
        Nuclear requires vastly more resources per kWh than wind, so we aren’t going to hit an inflection point where suddenly nuclear is better for the environment.

Retric 6y ago

That’s largely because Coal had fallen off a cliff almost everywhere else. China got 80% of it’s power from coal in 2010 and that’s down to 57.7% in 2019.

HellDunkel 6y ago
This paints a rather distorted picture. a) Coal plants did not fall off a cliff in western nations by accident and b) upcoming new coal plants in china are huge.