5 ms·

There’s still a significant environmental cost to renewables. Mining the materials for wind/solar and then to produce them (often this is powered by coal). And

There’s still a significant environmental cost to renewables. Mining the materials for wind/solar and then to produce them (often this is powered by coal). And there’s no real plan for how we will safely dispose of used solar panels. And there are land use issues with solar unless it is done on rooftops, which is much more expensive. We need nuclear and solar and wind and storage. One is not always better than the others. They all have trade offs and a role to play.

ncmncm 5y ago
This is all false. Disposing of used solar panels is trivial: the metal gets recycled, the silicon gets recycled, the cadmium and the tellurium get recycled. There is absolutely no land-use issue for solar: solar is compatible not just with roofs and parking lots, but also with reservoirs and canals, where it cuts evaporation and operates more efficiently, and even with pasture and farmland, where it increases yield (by reducing heat stress) and cuts water demand (likewise). There is a lot of pasture and farm land. Ranchers and farmers like an extra revenue stream and better yield. Wind, also, coexists neatly with pasture and farming. In any case, even were all solar farms single-use, the amount used up for that, for all our needs, would be less than is devoted to fossil fuel extraction today. So the land-use claim is simple FUD. Each dollar diverted to building nukes instead of renewables brings climate disaster ever nearer, because a dollar of renewables displaces more coal than a dollar of nuke, and immediately, not ten or twenty years from now.
- gregwebs 5y ago
  > Each dollar diverted to building nukes instead of renewables brings climate disaster ever nearer, because a dollar of renewables displaces more coal than a dollar of nuke, and immediately, not ten or twenty years from now. It's really odd to see these arguments being made right now. Germany is burning mostly fossil fuels now and and in an energy crisis because they decided to shut down all their nuclear and do renewables. We can install 50% of our new generation as solar and 10% as battery storage, but just as building a nuclear plant takes a decade, it would also take decades to replace our existing generation with solar and wind. The ability to produce solar panels is not going to increase by 10x overnight regardless of demand. Building solar and wind implies needing other sources of power for when the sun isn't shining in the wind is not blowing. If you don't build nuclear you build natural gas or keep using coal. Energy storage can help a lot, but we are maxing out our battery production as is. Maybe pumped hydro is the solution, but we aren't really building any changing this is going to take a lot of time as well. > solar is compatible not just with roofs and parking lots, but also with reservoirs and canals, where it cuts evaporation and operates more efficiently, and even with pasture and farmland, where it increases yield (by reducing heat stress) and cuts water demand (likewise). There is a lot of pasture and farm land. Ranchers and farmers like an extra revenue stream and better yield Most of these scenarios will more than double the cost of a solar install compared to a utility solar farm and require heavy subsidies. I have seen the stories about mixing solar with farming in arid climates, and I am hopeful that can be adopted as a practice, but I think you are front-running what is just an experiment right now. > Disposing of used solar panels is trivial: the metal gets recycled, the silicon gets recycled, the cadmium and the tellurium get recycled. Do you have any evidence that this is actually being done at scale now? Who do I can call to remove my solar panels and recycle them? For example, this article says "In the United States, there are only a few businesses specializing in the recycling of solar panels, so most panels that are submitted for recycling are being warehoused until a solution is found for the U.S." [1] [1] https://solarpowergenie.com/how-to-dispose-of-solar-panels-a-complete-green-guide/ https://solarpowergenie.com/how-to-dispose-of-solar-panels-a...
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Production of renewables has, in fact, increased by 10x several times over, and is still increasing as costs continue on down. Storage will not be in batteries, so it doesn't matter what production rate of batteries is. Huge amounts of pumped hydro are being built out right now. Bulk storage will be in synthetic chemicals, principally anhydrous ammonia and hydrogen, which besides being storable, are both readily transportable and valuable as industrial feedstock. > implies needing other sources of power for when the sun isn't shining in the wind is not blowing The sun is always shining somewhere, and the wind is always blowing somewhere. So, you just need to be equipped to transport the energy from somewhere to here. That will probably be, most often, via high-voltage transmission line, but also via supertanker. Absent transmission lines, you only need to stockpile enough to hold out until a shipment arrives from the tropics. Recycling solar panels is not being done at scale because very few panels have aged out, yet. There is, furthermore, a ready market for panels with degraded output. In any case, even if they were just piled up somewhere, that is no more a problem than doing the same thing with eroded wind turbine blades. There is plenty of room to park as much of them as you like. They don't even need a roof overhead. When the CdTe panels finally age out, there will be a ready market for the scrap, because Cd and Te are valuable. Building solar over pasture does not, in fact, substantially increase installation cost. But it does eliminate the need to buy land to use. Siting over cropland will be done more for the benefit of the crops, while providing revenue year-round. But in any case there is absolutely no shortage of suitable land for solar, even without co-siting. So, farmers can take up solar or not, at their option. Many will, probably most won't.
    - gregwebs 5y ago
      Every scaling process reaches bottlenecks. Solar panels increased in price in 2021/2022 due to the rising costs of the raw materials and there's no quick fix to this fundamental issue. I love your future Utopia. I just don't want to bet my future on all these new experiments coming together and working out perfectly. I think you are front-running every single energy source or technology mentioned. Even pumped hydro, which is a great and old technology- but it had it's first new project in the US approved in 30 years and it remains to be seen when it will actually be built because there are land use issues [1]. The war in Ukraine is creating a crisis of energy security. We need to ask ourselves whether we want to handle the intermittency of renewables by transporting energy all around the world with new experimental techniques or just build some nuclear plants in our own country and avoid all the geopolitics. [1] https://www.energy-storage.news/new-pumped-hydro-around-the-world-tried-and-tested-long-duration-storage-tech-makes-comeback/ https://www.energy-storage.news/new-pumped-hydro-around-the-...

ncmncm 5y ago

This is all false. Disposing of used solar panels is trivial: the metal gets recycled, the silicon gets recycled, the cadmium and the tellurium get recycled. There is absolutely no land-use issue for solar: solar is compatible not just with roofs and parking lots, but also with reservoirs and canals, where it cuts evaporation and operates more efficiently, and even with pasture and farmland, where it increases yield (by reducing heat stress) and cuts water demand (likewise). There is a lot of pasture and farm land. Ranchers and farmers like an extra revenue stream and better yield. Wind, also, coexists neatly with pasture and farming. In any case, even were all solar farms single-use, the amount used up for that, for all our needs, would be less than is devoted to fossil fuel extraction today. So the land-use claim is simple FUD. Each dollar diverted to building nukes instead of renewables brings climate disaster ever nearer, because a dollar of renewables displaces more coal than a dollar of nuke, and immediately, not ten or twenty years from now.

gregwebs 5y ago
> Each dollar diverted to building nukes instead of renewables brings climate disaster ever nearer, because a dollar of renewables displaces more coal than a dollar of nuke, and immediately, not ten or twenty years from now. It's really odd to see these arguments being made right now. Germany is burning mostly fossil fuels now and and in an energy crisis because they decided to shut down all their nuclear and do renewables. We can install 50% of our new generation as solar and 10% as battery storage, but just as building a nuclear plant takes a decade, it would also take decades to replace our existing generation with solar and wind. The ability to produce solar panels is not going to increase by 10x overnight regardless of demand. Building solar and wind implies needing other sources of power for when the sun isn't shining in the wind is not blowing. If you don't build nuclear you build natural gas or keep using coal. Energy storage can help a lot, but we are maxing out our battery production as is. Maybe pumped hydro is the solution, but we aren't really building any changing this is going to take a lot of time as well. > solar is compatible not just with roofs and parking lots, but also with reservoirs and canals, where it cuts evaporation and operates more efficiently, and even with pasture and farmland, where it increases yield (by reducing heat stress) and cuts water demand (likewise). There is a lot of pasture and farm land. Ranchers and farmers like an extra revenue stream and better yield Most of these scenarios will more than double the cost of a solar install compared to a utility solar farm and require heavy subsidies. I have seen the stories about mixing solar with farming in arid climates, and I am hopeful that can be adopted as a practice, but I think you are front-running what is just an experiment right now. > Disposing of used solar panels is trivial: the metal gets recycled, the silicon gets recycled, the cadmium and the tellurium get recycled. Do you have any evidence that this is actually being done at scale now? Who do I can call to remove my solar panels and recycle them? For example, this article says "In the United States, there are only a few businesses specializing in the recycling of solar panels, so most panels that are submitted for recycling are being warehoused until a solution is found for the U.S." [1] [1] https://solarpowergenie.com/how-to-dispose-of-solar-panels-a-complete-green-guide/ https://solarpowergenie.com/how-to-dispose-of-solar-panels-a...
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Production of renewables has, in fact, increased by 10x several times over, and is still increasing as costs continue on down. Storage will not be in batteries, so it doesn't matter what production rate of batteries is. Huge amounts of pumped hydro are being built out right now. Bulk storage will be in synthetic chemicals, principally anhydrous ammonia and hydrogen, which besides being storable, are both readily transportable and valuable as industrial feedstock. > implies needing other sources of power for when the sun isn't shining in the wind is not blowing The sun is always shining somewhere, and the wind is always blowing somewhere. So, you just need to be equipped to transport the energy from somewhere to here. That will probably be, most often, via high-voltage transmission line, but also via supertanker. Absent transmission lines, you only need to stockpile enough to hold out until a shipment arrives from the tropics. Recycling solar panels is not being done at scale because very few panels have aged out, yet. There is, furthermore, a ready market for panels with degraded output. In any case, even if they were just piled up somewhere, that is no more a problem than doing the same thing with eroded wind turbine blades. There is plenty of room to park as much of them as you like. They don't even need a roof overhead. When the CdTe panels finally age out, there will be a ready market for the scrap, because Cd and Te are valuable. Building solar over pasture does not, in fact, substantially increase installation cost. But it does eliminate the need to buy land to use. Siting over cropland will be done more for the benefit of the crops, while providing revenue year-round. But in any case there is absolutely no shortage of suitable land for solar, even without co-siting. So, farmers can take up solar or not, at their option. Many will, probably most won't.
  - gregwebs 5y ago
    Every scaling process reaches bottlenecks. Solar panels increased in price in 2021/2022 due to the rising costs of the raw materials and there's no quick fix to this fundamental issue. I love your future Utopia. I just don't want to bet my future on all these new experiments coming together and working out perfectly. I think you are front-running every single energy source or technology mentioned. Even pumped hydro, which is a great and old technology- but it had it's first new project in the US approved in 30 years and it remains to be seen when it will actually be built because there are land use issues [1]. The war in Ukraine is creating a crisis of energy security. We need to ask ourselves whether we want to handle the intermittency of renewables by transporting energy all around the world with new experimental techniques or just build some nuclear plants in our own country and avoid all the geopolitics. [1] https://www.energy-storage.news/new-pumped-hydro-around-the-world-tried-and-tested-long-duration-storage-tech-makes-comeback/ https://www.energy-storage.news/new-pumped-hydro-around-the-...