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Rare earth mineral mining also gets that subsidy as does the manufacture of PV panels.
by rplst8 11y ago
Rare earth mineral mining also gets that subsidy as does the manufacture of PV panels.
- mikeash 11y agoTrue, but the scale doesn't come anywhere close. Renewables production isn't changing the climate, poisoning seafood, or giving millions of people lung diseases.
- hueving 11y agoWell it is because it depends on heavy industry to manufacture it. I'm curios, are there stats on the energy that goes into manufacturing a windmill + battery setup vs the expected energy output over the lifetime? In other words, are they at least self sustaining? Haul trucks and crushers for mining take massive amounts of energy that are currently being driven by fossil fuels. So renewables are subsidized by fossil fuels and the question is how much?
- elektromekatron 11y agoThere is a lot of research into this. The terminology is the energy return on energy invested, or ERoEI. And yes, wind power is definitely self sustaining. Wind turbines are pretty simple, cheap, and tend to last a while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_inve...