What’s Wrong with Wind and Solar?
Are wind, solar, and batteries the magical solutions to all our energy needs? Or do they come with too high a price? Mark Mills, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, analyzes the true cost — both economic and environmental — of so-called green energy.
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Script:
Have you ever heard of “unobtanium”?
It’s the magical energy mineral found on the planet Pandora in the movie, Avatar. It’s a fantasy in a science fiction script. But environmentalists think they’ve found it here on earth in the form of wind and solar power.
They think all the energy we need can be supplied by building enough wind and solar farms; and enough batteries.
The simple truth is that we can’t. Nor should we want to—not if our goal is to be good stewards of the planet.
To understand why, consider some simple physics realities that aren’t being talked about.
All sources of energy have limits that can’t be exceeded. The maximum rate at which the sun’s photons can be converted to electrons is about 33%. Our best solar technology is at 26% efficiency. For wind, the maximum capture is 60%. Our best machines are at 45%.
So, we’re pretty close to wind and solar limits. Despite PR claims about big gains coming, there just aren’t any possible. And wind and solar only work when the wind blows and the sun shines. But we need energy all the time. The solution we’re told is to use batteries. Again, physics and chemistry make this very hard to do.
Consider the world’s biggest battery factory, the one Tesla built in Nevada. It would take 500 years for that factory to make enough batteries to store just one day’s worth of America’s electricity needs. This helps explain why wind and solar currently still supply less than 3% of the world’s energy, after 20 years and billions of dollars in subsidies.
Putting aside the economics, if your motive is to protect the environment, you might want to rethink wind, solar, and batteries because, like all machines, they’re built from nonrenewable materials.
Consider some sobering numbers:
A single electric-car battery weighs about half a ton. Fabricating one requires digging up, moving, and processing more than 250 tons of earth somewhere on the planet.
Building a single 100 Megawatt wind farm, which can power 75,000 homes requires some 30,000 tons of iron ore and 50,000 tons of concrete, as well as 900 tons of non-recyclable plastics for the huge blades. To get the same power from solar, the amount of cement, steel, and glass needed is 150% greater.
Then there are the other minerals needed, including elements known as rare earth metals. With current plans, the world will need an incredible 200 to 2,000 percent increase in mining for elements such as cobalt, lithium, and dysprosium, to name just a few.
Where’s all this stuff going to come from? Massive new mining operations. Almost none of it in America, some imported from places hostile to America, and some in places we all want to protect.
Australia’s Institute for a Sustainable Future cautions that a global “gold” rush for energy materials will take miners into “…remote wilderness areas [that] have maintained high biodiversity because they haven’t yet been disturbed.”
And who is doing the mining? Let’s just say that they’re not all going to be union workers with union protections.
Amnesty International paints a disturbing picture: “The… marketing of state-of-the-art technologies are a stark contrast to the children carrying bags of rocks.”
And then the mining itself requires massive amounts of conventional energy, as do the energy-intensive industrial processes needed to refine the materials and then build the wind, solar, and battery hardware.
Then there’s the waste. Wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries have a relatively short life; about twenty years. Conventional energy machines, like gas turbines, last twice as long.
For the complete script visit https://www.prageru.com/video/whats-wrong-with-wind-and-solar
source
I would like to tell the author to read a bit about the following
1. Perovskite cells. There is a possibility that we may be able to go beyind 33 percent.
2. Susidies given to the fossile fuel industries
3. Life-long emissions of solar and wind against even matural gas which is the cleanest form of fossil fuels.
4. Reports by various NGOs regarding the employee policies of shell, bp and many other companies in the oil fields of Africa.
5. The breakthroughs in recycling for raisins and fibers used in the wind turbines
But please continue to make such useless videos. It is a sign of a dying industries continuing to fight for their last days
😊
To much nonsense!
you know that's a deep fake, right ?
I am an EE at an electric utility in the US. To me hydro is one of the best. But If anyone truly wants to get away from fossil fuels sources generation then we need a MASSIVE push for nuclear.
If we can find a way to make the upfront cost of building a new nuclear plant less prohibitive, and figure out how to easily get hold of nuclear material, then many of our energy problems will be manageable.
We can power our grids on our poop.
Billions of dollars on subsidizing solar over 20 years? That sounds like so much. It is good then that there are payoffs to that money. Most solar cells are between 17-20% efficient, but researches have photovoltaic cells that are at 50% efficient-this is a huge increase and well worth the "billions" claimed in this video. When we look at how much the US government spends on fossil fuel subsidies we can see how misleading this video is: The United States taxpayers spent 20 Billion dollars subsidizing fossil fuels in 2022 alone according to the government's own numbers. https://www.budget.senate.gov/chairman/newsroom/press/sen-whitehouse-on-fossil-fuel-subsidies-we-are-subsidizing-the-danger-#:~:text=It's%20not%20just%20the%20US,to%20the%20fossil%20fuel%20industry.
If the fossil fuel industry had spent more money divesting in cleaner energy sources back in the 1970s, when their own scientists proved that burning these fuels was causing climate change (Exxon Mobile hid this information and lied to congress and lobbied hard to utilize more oil (plastic bags too) and then got rid of their renewable energy department), then we would have cleaner air, less plastic pollution in our food, water, soil, air and bodies, less climate change, less environmental destruction (google why environmental destruction and habitat loss is bad if you don't know), and a better overall quality of life with cheaper and cleaner energy for more people.
Stop believing this powerful and rich fossil fuel entity. They do not care about you or I; all they care about are the profits they make in the short term and how they will use their ill-gotten gains.
Why are electric bill is higher because the government are demanding thay fo it
I've heard wind and solar have made some major improvements.
That’s some serious quality propaganda by the fossil fuel industry. 😂😂😂
Wow a mouthpiece for petrol manufacturers….
I vouch for electrofuel generated from CO2, water, catalyst and all types of renewable energy sources.
Electrofuel is fully recyclable, carbon neutral, zero toxic and having comparable volumetric energy density with fossil fuel.
inexhaustible supply of hydrocarbons? I don't believe that but I do think we need to keep fossil fuels at least for the interim until we can have truly renewable energy.
They need this man to speak to these arrogant, half-wit crusaders like AOC and make an attempt to help them understand how delusional and undereducated they are. I don’t care about their political positions, I care about stupid people who have been elected into positions of power; pursuing even more stupid policies.
Baised, as this org is funded by big oil
Children mining.. 😇👈 God's watching you all
Curious about your sources. Where are they?
I like PragerU, but clearly who are its benefactor. After all, its easier and cheaper for oil companies to pay for ads than to chip in for renewable powers.
I wonder how much these guys have been paid to make this video?
I hope enough to pay for all the pollution he is supporting.
Dumb and dumber… yes the smart choice are engines, ICE or any form of thermal engine, which are only 30% efficient. Very smart indeed.
Building housing like earthships turning bio waste into power building housing with separate power units so we don't live off a grid but considering issues with solar may need a re-think.. hydrogen?
Investments into solar and wind and other renewable are increasing amount of scientists and engineers working on solving those problems, and renewables will get cheaper one day. All those investments are not wasted definitely, multiple breakthroughs in batteries and harvesting clean energy will make all your current relevant points obsolete at some point.
"energy cannot be created, nor destroyed"
This video is idiotic!
Most likely covertly pushed Big Fossil Fuel.
This channel should be boycotted forthwith.
He refers to the Betts and Shockley-Quasar Limits, but does not seem to realize that recent scientific discoveries and technology changes being implemented are invalidating both of those constraints.
I work in Green Energy. I see each of the points he makes in this video (and many more that he does not mention) being addressed by the Solar and Wind industries, and at break-neck speed to boot.
It has taken Petroleum 150 years, and Coal many thousands of years to get to where they are. They have served us well in the past, but now they are really hurting us (unless you are a Climate Change-denying FOOL).
The move to using (vastly technologically improved forms of) Ubiquitous Distributed Energy Storage-backed Solar, Wind, Tidal, Geothermal, Thorium-based Fission, and of Fusion within the next 10-20 years are a necessity, NOT some nerdy liberal fantasy! Are there many challenges today in so doing? YES, of course there are. But every one of those will be solved. And as an industry insider, I see it happening before my eyes, almost week-by-week.
I thought this video would be hilarious and it was. I would love to know where they got their "facts" from.
An interesting article.
I think we are ignoring completely a source of energy that is being produced merely from our waste but hay that’s just free stuff.
I dont see any other alternative to renewable energy. All conventional technologys inherit our children a burning planet or a giant pile of hazardous radioactive materials that has to be stored safely forever and ever with increasing effort to keep it safe.
Also I think that this video is very manipulative. Yes, a wind turbine consumes ernegy and concret to built. And yes it is a problem to recycle the blades. But how much does a coal plant cost? How much concret is in a nuclear power plant? What giant holes did we dig for coal, gas and uranium?
And yes, a wind turbine may cost as much as an oil rig. And its energy output might be smaller than the one of the oil rig. But we can built turbines in way more places than oil rigs. And if a turbine is old an may be broken I can put a new turbine where the old one was. And I can repeat this replacement over and over again. Can I do this with an oil rig too?
We have to start bulilding for a renewable future. I am proud to own a solar roof with a capacity to provide electric energy for 9 out of 12 mounth. And in summertime it is enough that I dont need fossil energy to heat my water. And I am happy that Meredes built a factory to recycle and reuse old batteries so that we can reuse these rare materials that are needed for batteries. And yes, we need to find ways to recycle and reuse all materials, from plastic bags to turbine blades, all of them.
We as parents have to leave a better and cleaner earth for all of our kids.
What are we going to do when we run out of oil?
"Some places we wanna protect " 😂😂😂😂😂😂
You forget the green movement is a religious enterprise. It's true because they beleave it, don't confuse them with facts. But most of don't tell them that there's no free lunch, or no Santa, they'll throw tantrums, bad language and death threats at you.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. 500 years, one factory. That’s 10 years with 50 factories which is about more like reality.
But we do need nuclear.
Paid for by the American Petroleum Institute
You could have talked about the upside of Nuclear Energy instead of Oil