A Cautious View of Renewables
A Cautious View of Renewables
The true costs of renewables are fudged by not counting external and replacement costs, argues commentator Charles Hugh Smith…
► Virtually all the “heavy lifting” of creating the systems has to be done by mining, manufacturing and transportation that require abundant quantities of hydrocarbons, especially oil.
► After 15 to 25 years all alternative energy systems and structures have to be replaced, requiring substantial reinvestment.
► Wind and solar energy is intermittent and therefore require battery storage on a scale that won’t be practicable. Also batteries don’t last very long. The percentage of lithium-ion batteries being recycled is near-zero, so they will end up as costly, toxic landfill.
► External costs of alternative energy are not taken into account. For example, the environmental damage caused by lithium mines is not costed into the price of lithium batteries.
Grid-distributed electricity sourced from renewables has more than doubled over the past decade from 1,336 trillion watt-hours to 2,579. It can still be very expensive, but becoming less. According to a 2017 study, the average cost over a generating asset’s lifetime is 14 US cents per kilowatt/hour for offshore wind and 10 for solar, but just six cents for onshore wind.
Trillions of dollars are being committed to building carbon-free infrastructure, whether that be solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear or hydrogen. As that buildout gets under way it will require massive fiscal support, regulatory bypasses for permitting, and taxation supports in the form of carbon credits, says Eoin Treacy. “It will also result in a significant near-term boost in demand for all manner of resources from copper to lithium and from coal to oil.”
