Guest post: We will still need
Originally a comment by Rev David Brindley on We cannot even manage those minor changes.
Even IF we can slow, or reverse the rising temperatures, we are still doomed.
The world may come to run on 100% renewable electricity and 100% hydrogen, but there are still limits.
We will still need oil, not for ICEs, but for plastics, pharmaceuticals, fertilisers, etc.
We will still need plastics, not for excessive packaging, but for all its other myriad uses in medicine, science, engineering, etc.
We will run out of silica sands for making solar panels. Fraser Island has enormous deposits of almost 100% pure silica, but mining has been banned since the 70’s. But will that ban hold as silica supply exceeds demand?
We will still need to mine iron ore, copper, and all the other metals needed to build solar panels, and wind turbines, connect them to the grid and distribute the electricity. South Australia has a huge uptake of rooftop solar on homes and commercial properties, but not everywhere in the world is blessed with that amount of sunlight, even in winter.
And then we still have the pollution problem, the industrial waste to dispose of. Solar panels don’t last forever, and there is currently no way to recycle them. A similar problem exists with the blades of wind turbines.
And, that is just the beginning of future problems.
None of that is to argue we should give up the fight, because even if we achieve nothing but cleaner air and water that will be a massive win.
This has been your daily dose of doom and gloom.
Sorry, we are not going to run out of silica to make solar panels. Silicon is the most common solid element in the earth’s crust, surpassed only by oxygen mass. Photovoltaic panels need only reasonably pure silicon (99.999%, which sounds like a lot until you see the microelectronics standards), but the vast majority of the feedstock used for PV production is just high-silica content sand (70-90%). The energy required for the purification process is ‘repaid’ in less than six months in most deployment locations. The dramatic reduction in the cost of PV panels over the past generation is directly attributable to the emergence of solar grade silicon suppliers making it a cheap commodity rather the primary price determinant of a solar cell.
Naif, I agree with that. Silica is one of the most abundant elements. Does that mean I think we should decimate systems for it? No. But I hope there are better ways…I don’t believe we will ever do any of the things to reach those better ways.
I also find it hard to believe that solar panels cannot be recycled. Recycling is a matter of economy of scale. All of the active coating on a solar panel has been purified from ore at much lower concentrations than present on panels. Recycling electronics requires getting a reasonably homogenous feedstock so that you can set up the physical and chemical components of the systems to work optimally. It’s a bit like Li car batteries. There are multiple companies that have developed techniques to recycle the batteries, and are now waiting for the wave of end of life batteries to reach a suitable economy of scale – predicted to be 10-15 years away at current trends.
Funnily enough that horizon is pushed back because clever people have started up companies using end of life car batteries for static energy storage where the performance is fine for years more; and also that car batteries from most makers are performing better than expected.
As I have previously mentioned my education (well, at least my second education…) is in renewable energy engineering. Not that this makes me any kind of authority on the production of solar panels or wind turbines (contrary to popular belief engineers don’t make things, they do maths), but it has taught me to be suspicious of the most common talking points about the downsides of renewables, since we know that many of them are being actively pushed by the Usual Suspects. The life-cycle analyses I have seen have been pretty consistent that renewables are – if not exactly “green” – then certainly less “brown” (in the late Herman Daly’s words) than fossil fuels. I will say for sure that the common claim that it takes more (fossil fuel generated) energy to produce the solar panels or wind turbines than they produce in their lifetime is just plain wrong.
To be clear, I agree that we’re screwed. I also agree that renewables on their own were never going to get us out of the mess we’re in. Any proposed solution based on the premise that we were going to go on living as before, only without the carbon emissions (changing to an electric car but not driving less etc.) was always a false solution. But just because transition to less carbon-intensive modes of energy production
is notwould not have been sufficient doesn’t mean it‘s notwould not have been necessary. It may be tempting to conclude that since the lesser evil is still evil we might as well go with the greater evil, but that would be an example of the Nirvana Fallacy.We also need to come up with a coherent plan for mobilizing the 60-70% of the human race that doesn’t have its collective head up it’s aggregated ass to break the power of those oligarchs and their political henchmen who are resisting necessary change. I’ll give you a timeline of two years. On your marks, ….
The reality is, when we talk about energy sources, we need to compare between sources. Even if a source is not perfectly “green”, if it is substantially better than the other sources (like, every source is better than coal, for instance), that should be our question, not IS THERE ABSOLUTELY NO DOWNSIDE? IF THERE IS, WHY CHANGE ANYTHING?
Nuclear comes off well compared to all fossil fuels, at least in terms of emissions. There is still mining and waste to deal with, but of course that’s true with most energy sources. Wind and solar are also great with emissions, but there are other issues that people can act like are deal killers – but the reality is, there are many, many, many things that are destructive – driving, flying, cruise ships, hunting, having glass windows on our houses, and cell phone towers, to name only a few – that don’t get this level of attention, though most of them should.
We will still need oil, not for ICEs, but for (…) fertilisers, etc.
We can get this one out of the list of issues. Improving soil health (biomass cycling) in addition to targeting fertilizing plants in hedges should suffice. Of course it requires finding out plant communities that increase nutrient accumulation (beyond Fabaceae), but finding systems integrating green manure in cropping systems (either as interseason culture or as intercropping) or aside it (hedges) is far from impossible. In the tropics, we are lucky to have a diverse array of Fabacaea species (fixing nitrogen from atmosphere) and P hyperaccumulator (Tithonia diversifolia), which are ready to use, so to say. I’m comfident that we can even go further and have plants using… plants cycling/filtering grey and black waters that can be used as biomass inputs for agriculture.
Indeed. The scrutiny on energy use in particular is vital, as a first step, but overly narrow. Anthropogenic climate change brought on by fossil fuel usage is only one part of a much larger problem we’ve created. Energy usage is only one skirmish in a much larger battle that is only one engagement in an all-encompassing war we barely know we are waging. Even if all our energy was completely green and non-destructive, even if we reduced our carbon footprint to zero, the rest of human industrial production, transport, consumption and disposal will still destroy the biosphere. Nearly everything we do, since there are so many of us, is destructive. We as a species* claim a monopoly on the entire Earth, and ascribe unique priority, meaning, and worth to our own needs and whims above the very existence and continuation of all other beings on the planet. We are killing ourselves, and everything else, with our delusions. We elevate wants and desires to necessities, and imagine that the Earth is a limitless source of everything we crave, and a bottomless pit for the wastes we produce. These attitudes arose when our numbers were smaller, our technology less powerful, and our rapaciousness was visited upon places far away, inhabited by people who were not us** and creatures that were not human. Well, we’ve run out of places that are far away, and everybody is “us.”
*Not everybody makes this claim, but industrial civilization is undergirded by this assumption. And certainly very few humans enjoy unquestioned, unfettered access to the appropriated plunder taken under the banner of human exceptionalism.
**Again, this is a simplification that ignores the exploitation and destruction that powered, monied elites have always inflicted upon the poor and powerless among whom they lived. Imperialism simply took this pre-existing model on the road.