Mike Mills...prager link

minerals, physics link

Cut power off when a shortage link

According to an analysis from The Heartland Institute, this Green New Deal scheme would require huge swaths of land to implement. Generating electric power entirely from solar panels would require 57,048 square miles of land—an area equivalent to the size of New York and Vermont—for 18.8 billion solar panels. And, a shift to wind power would require 2.12 million turbines on 500,682 square miles of land—an area equivalent to Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, and much of West Virginia.

What is required for the UK and planet to be net zero emissions link

For the planet: require 9291 GW of continuous CO2-free power generation. That’s equivalent to building 3,100 nuclear power plants of 3 GW each, or 7.74 million wind turbines of 3 MW each (capacity factor of 0.4)., a single 3-MW wind turbine needs 335 tons of steel, 4.7 tonnes of copper, 1,200 tons of concrete (120–150 tons of cement), 2 tonnes of rare earth metals, 40 tonnes of unrecyclable plastic, and large amounts of fossil fuel energy to build. The capital cost of an offshore wind turbine is expected to be between $4,400 and $6,000 per kW link



The Climate Noose, report Darwall link

Green energy reality check, mines minerals and green energy link

1,000 pound car battery requires extracting and processing 500,000 pounds of material. 5 pounds of material per mile driven. 100 barrels of oil required to make a battery that can store the equivalent of 1 barrel of oil. 

100MW wind farm requires 30,000 tons of iron ore, 50,000 tons of concrete, 900 tons of non recyclable plastic For same energy solar is 150% more.

The Climate Noose, Business, Net Zero, and the IPPC's Anticapitalism. Rupert Darwall link

It is estimated that current battery manufacturing capabilities will need to be in the order of 500-700 times bigger than now to support an all-electric global transport system. The materials needed just to allow the UK to transition to all electric transport involve amounts of materials equal to 200% the annual global production of cobalt, 75% of lithium carbonate, 100% of neodymium and 50% of copper. Scaling by a factor of 50 for the world transport, and you see what is now a showstopper. The materials demands just for batteries are beyond known reserves. Would one be prepared to dredge the ocean floor at very large scale for some of the material? Should securing the reserves not be a first priority? 

Dependence on overseas sources of materials, double size of grid, no energy independence link

Net zero, a goal without a plan link

what would it take for the USA to be 100% newable electricity link

Replacing coal, gas and nuclear electricity, internal combustion vehicles, gas for home heating, and coal and gas for factories – and using batteries as backup power for seven windless, sunless days – would require some 8.5 billion megawatts. Generating that much electricity would require some 75 billion solar panels … or 4 million 1.8-MW onshore wind turbines … or 300,000 12-MW offshore wind turbines … or a combination of those technologies – plus some 3.5 billion 100-kWh batteries … hundreds of new transmission lines … and mining and manufacturing on scales far beyond anything the world has ever seen.That is not clean, green, renewable energy. It is ecologically destructive and completely unsustainable – financially, ecologically and politically,

the hundreds of millions of acres of US scenic and wildlife habitat lands that would be covered by turbines, panels, batteries, biofuel crops, power lines, and forests clear cut to supply biofuel power plants;  bat and other animal species that would disappear under this onslaught, child labor, near-slave labor, and minimal to nonexistent worker health and safety, pollution control and environmental reclamation regulations in foreign countries where materials are mined and “renewable” energy technologies manufacture.  increasing reliance on Chinese mining and manufacturing, sends electricity rates skyrocketing, kills millions of American jobs and causes US living standards to plummet, (economic, political, environmental costs must be calculated) link

How much renewable energy will we need?

So if we are going to zero emissions by 2050, we will need to replace about 193 petawatt-hours (10^15 watt-hours) of fossil fuel energy per year. Since there are 8,766 hours in a year, we need to build and install about 193 PWhrs/year divided by 8766 hrs/year ≈ 22 terawatts (TW, or 10^12 watts) of energy generating capacity.

Starting from today, January 25, 2021, there are 10,568 days until January 1, 2050. So we need to install, test, commission, and add to the grid about 22 TW / 10568 days ≈ 2.1 gigawatts/day (GW/day, or 10^9 watts/day) of generating capacity each and every day from now until 2050.

1 2.1 GW nuclear plant every single day until 2050

or Don’t like nukes? Well, we could use wind power. Now, the wind doesn’t blow all the time. Typical wind “capacity factor”, the percentage of actual energy generated compared to the nameplate capacity, is about 35%. So we’d have to build, install, commission and bring online just under 3,000 medium-sized (2 megawatt, MW = 106 watts) wind turbines every single day from now until 2050. No problemo, right.

3,000 2MW wind turbines every single day unto 2050

Don’t like wind? Well, we could use solar. Per the NREL, actual delivery from grid-scale solar panel installations on a 24/7/365 basis is on the order of 8.3 watts per square metre depending on location. So we’d have to cover ≈ 96 square miles (250 square kilometres) with solar panels, wire them up, test them, and connect them to the grid every single day from now until 2050. Child’s play, right?

96 squar miles of solar panels every singel day to 2050