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There is no such thing as "clean energy". Energy always entails environmental impact. As an example, a wind turbine has large environment impact: * During its
by lwouis 5y ago
There is no such thing as "clean energy". Energy always entails environmental impact. As an example, a wind turbine has large environment impact:
* During its production: mining to get the metals, heavy metal work like making steel, cement, resins, etc. Digging large mines, driving trucks all around with heavy materials
* During its operations: noise, visual pollution, often destroying wildlife sites as people don't want them close to their living areas
* After its operations: mostly unrecyclable, composite materials like resins, cement; often burried/landfilled
> Google claims to be carbon neutral now but are also planning to switch to 100% renewable energy by 2030. I guess they are planting trees or something.
I think this is a good representation of what the common person think. "They must be dealing with the pollution issues, right? Trees, hydrogen, electric cars, it's all going to be ok, right?".
Start looking up data on this topic, and prepare for a deep dive into how no-one is actually doing anything significant about it, while calling everything green. No-one is "carbon neutral". It's complete marketing / green-washing. Google footprint on our ecosystem is large.
- mdp2021 5y agoI was similarly surprised when I read about a few ecological downsides of solar power. What is the best material you found on "full comprehensive costs (including downsides and externalities) of energy sources"?
- snoopx31 5y agoYou can try talks from this guy, he's a french energy and climate expert. I found that he explained very well the root of the issue between growth, energy and climate impact. Here is a talk he did for the MIT media lab in english: https://youtu.be/s254IPHXgVA https://youtu.be/s254IPHXgVA
- iamstupidsimple 5y ago> During its operations: noise, visual pollution, often destroying wildlife sites as people don't want them close to their living areas The UK's mostly solved this by putting turbines a couple miles off the coast. And the benefit of having that renewable energy vastly outweighs the environmental impact of "noise".