The dirty little secret about clean energy...
Real Clear Investigations (5/15/25) reports: "While green advocates commonly use the terms renewable, sustainable, and net zero to describe their efforts, the dirty little secret is that much of the waste from solar panels and wind turbines is ending up in landfills. The current amounts of fiberglass, resins, aluminum and other chemicals – not to mention propeller blades from giant wind turbines – pose no threat current to local town dumps, but this largely ignored problem will become more of a challenge in the years ahead as the 500 million solar panels and the 73,000 wind turbines now operating in the U.S. are decommissioned and replaced....'Solar waste will grow exponentially in the next 20 years,' Tao said. 'Globally, we produced 20-25 million tons of solar panels in 2023. They will come offline in roughly 20 years. That is 20-25 million tons of solar waste a year in 2045.' The Institute for Energy Research puts the potential mountain even higher, pointing to studies that put the 2050 figure at 78 million tons. For now, 90% of this detritus goes to landfills. And the panel fields and towering turbines must be dismantled, trucked away, usually by diesel-powered vehicles, and then sent to landfills or ports, where they are shipped to poor, developing countries."
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Let's be real: if Republicans pass the House budget bill as is, it will murder the US nuclear industry, ruin our chances of winning the AI race (by constraining power supply), concede the global auto sector to China, and vaporize about half a trillion dollars of US manufacturing investment. All while raising energy costs for US households and businesses."
– Jesse Jenkins,
Princeton University
|
|
|
|
|
|
