Letters / Reality check
In our headlong rush to ‘save the planet’ perhaps a sobering reality check for the deluded Greens is long overdue?
A small, ever-so-green, 100-megawatt wind farm needs 30,000 tons of iron ore; 50,000 tons of concrete and 900 tons of non-recyclable plastic.
For the same power from an ever-so-green solar farm you need to increase that by 150 per cent.
An electric car battery weighs half a ton, making just one requires shifting 250 tons of earth somewhere else on the planet.
All require what are called ‘rare earths’, so a phenomenal 200 to 2,000 per cent increase in toxic mining, processing and shipping is required somewhere else on the planet, usually from unregulated regimes with very lax environmental standards.
Solar and wind have weather-dependant limits, but we need energy ALL the time, so we have to have permanent back-up. The giant Tesla factory in Nevada would take 500 years to make enough batteries to supply the USA with electricity for 1 day!
After 30 years and countless billions in subsidies wind and solar supply less than 3 per cent of the world’s energy. On top of that, like all machines ‘renewables’ are built from non-renewable materials – and have to be replaced time and time again, so definitely NOT a one-off cost.
The International Renewable Energy Agency calculates that solar energy goals for 2050 to meet the Paris Accord will result in old-panel disposal constituting more than double the tonnage of all today’s global plastic waste!
The environmental cost?
To accommodate 2,000 MW of gas or nuclear power generation requires the same area of two 18-hole golf courses. Whereas, accommodating 2,000 MW of wind power requires an area the size of Belgium!
Then, of course, you still need 2,000 MW of gas or nuclear power to accommodate those hundreds of occasions each year when wind and solar power is producing absolutely nothing.
Renewables will undoubtedly cause far more environmental damage to wildlife.
Instead of ‘saving the planet’ rampaging renewables are actually devouring it!
George Herraghty
Elgin
Moray
