Contrary to what the environmental mafia has been preaching for the last several decades, “renewables” are not renewable.
Solar panel manufacturers typically provide standard performance and product warranties of 25 to 30 years and then hint that this operating life span may extend to 30 to 35 years or longer. Hopefully your panels won’t have to experience a hailstorm, hurricane or tornado during this multi-decade operating life.
Replacing a solar panel is not resource neutral. You need silicon, glass, aluminum, copper, silver and various forms of plastic that are processed from crude oil.
These materials require mining or drilling and industrial processing before everything can come together in the final panel manufacturing process.
Windmills are huge, incredibly expensive gearboxes that rotate in a hydrocarbon based lubricating fluid and, like your car’s engine, are only good for so many rotations before expiration.
Bringing the replacement windmill online requires lots of steel, cast iron, concrete and fiberglass (fiberglass manufacturing starts with crude oil). Once again, mining or drilling for the necessary resources is necessary prior to processing the components and, ultimately, assembly of the new windmill.
Yes, after expiration, the wind will keep on blowing and the sun will keep on shining, but renewal is not automatic. Renewal is something somebody has to make happen. And each renewal requires a lot of money and resources.
By contrast, a stretch of pasture might nourish cows to be harvested for hamburger and steaks. The pasture will “renew” every year all by itself. No need to order anything from a solar panel retailer.
A thorium reactor that has been designed so uranium 238 will capture excess neutrons transforming some of it to PU239 is also “renewable” because the Pu 239 can be separated and used to fabricate new fuel rods.
An internal combustion engine transforming fossil fuels into water and carbon dioxide is returning carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere that was removed by the plant life that decomposed into the fossil fuel being burned. This newly released carbon dioxide is now available for plant life to convert into organic matter that will decompose once again in over a 100 million years or so into more fossil fuel.
This is what “renewable” really means.
Robert Crocker
Chehalis
