Are solar and wind power the answers to future clean, reliable energy needs?
When you hear about the international climate change accords redistributing wealth to poor countries, there is a dirty little secret that they don’t want you to know. Their “aid” and “support” only provide for renewables like solar and wind power. Some of this is aimed at individual hut-mounted solar panels, which is OK as a temporary solution supplying personal needs for those areas that are far from electrical grids. For long term growth and economic development, reliable, consistent fossil fuel (coal, oil, gas), hydroelectric, geothermal and nuclear power are needed but are prohibited or discouraged in favor of intermittent, unreliable solar and wind power. Construction of over 200 hydroelectric dams have been stopped in Africa alone on environmental grounds, although hydroelectric power is one of the cleanest and most reliable forms of energy generation. Africa has hydroelectric capacity to supply all the continent’s needs for the foreseeable future, but development is meager. Meanwhile, over 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have no access to electricity. Energy Poverty is keeping countries in Africa and other underdeveloped countries from developing a robust economy through manufacturing, mining, agriculture, technology and investment, to join the twenty-first century. They need to develop electrical systems using the “all-of-the-above” approach. The need is extreme, and the need is urgent.
Here are a few reason why solar and wind power are not the answer to clean, reliable power anywhere in the world, and especially in countries in Energy Poverty. They are neither clean nor reliable.
Solar and wind power are NOT the answers to clean energy for the future.
- If environmentalists were serious about clean power, they would support hydroelectric, geothermal and nuclear power. All of which are clean, reliable and use well developed technologies.
- If CO2 is not causing warming, (see previous post) hydrocarbons can provide clean energy with proper scrubbers to eliminate pollutants from smoke.
- Solar and wind power, by their very nature, are intermittent and unpredictable. The sun is not always visible and the wind is not always blowing at ideal speeds.
- You can’t run a hospital or a manufacturing plant on unpredictable intermittent and fluctuating power.
- Fluctuating power can damage computers and electric motors in appliances like refrigerators, heat pumps, etc.
- As primary power sources, solar and wind power require back up power from other more consistent sources. Their unpredictable nature makes it difficult to supply consistent power through back up sources like fossil fuel and hydroelectric power plants, which cannot change their output quickly, and must run constantly at less than peak efficiency to be ready when needed.
- More realistically, wind and solar can only provide a small amount of supplementary power to other more reliable sources like fossil fuel or hydroelectric plants.
- Solar and wind power sources require covering large areas with turbines or solar arrays to supply power, which necessarily disrupts ecosystems. The area disrupted per megawatt of power, compared to other energy sources is staggering. Even reservoirs behind hydroelectric dams are less disruptive to the environment.
- Solar panels and wind generator super magnets require exotic “rare earth” minerals, whose extraction is very polluting due to the naturally dispersed nature of rare earths (thus the name). Mine wastes include radioactive and toxic elements such as uranium and mercury that often contaminate lakes and streams.
- Solar panels are very inefficient and short lived, e.g. typically less than 30% efficiency for 15 to 20 years with declining efficiency over time. Efficiency varies with the time of day/angle of the sun, latitude, prevalence of clouds and dust accumulation. Disposal of wastes are also problematic.
- Solar plants using mirrors aimed at a steam generator are low tech but their high heat kills birds.
- Wind turbines kill birds and bats by sucking them into the blades, and produce infra-sound that is annoying and may be harmful to animals and humans.
Why do environmentalists hate hydroelectric power, which is the cleanest and most reliable power source
- Environmentalists oppose hydroelectric power for two reasons.
- The first and real reason is that their socialistic goal is to cripple economies and reduce populations that these sources would support.
- “Giving society cheap abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” – Paul Ehrlich, or paraphrased: “Like giving a loaded gun to a child”)
- They dream of a return to idealized more primitive times, which were, in reality, brutal and polluting.
- In reality, the best way to protect the environment and stabilize family sizes is to raise poor people in developing countries out of their disease ridden squalor. They’re not lazy, just sick and weakened by malaria, parasites and other infections. Poverty, not population size, is the cause of environmental damage.
- Africa, for example, has largely untapped hydroelectric capacity beyond their energy needs for the foreseeable future, but that would support a larger population, which the environmentalists fight against.
- The second “reason,” aka excuse, is disruption of the environment.
- They don’t seem to mind the environmental disruption by wind and solar farms.
- Hydroelectric power using large to small waterfalls provides reliable power with minimal impact.
- Hydroelectric dams require reservoirs that fill slowly to cover formerly dry land, (so the downstream river is not starved in the process), which temporarily disrupts ecosystems that historically have quickly adapted.
- They prevent periodic downstream flooding that causes misery and death.
- They provide water for homes, industry and agriculture, and jobs from fishing and tourism.
- If there is a shortage of fresh water in the world, as claimed by environmentalists, it is because reservoirs are needed. Reservoirs not only retain more water from loss to the sea, but actually help to replenish ground water through lateral seepage into the underlying and surrounding strata.
- The first and real reason is that their socialistic goal is to cripple economies and reduce populations that these sources would support.
***************************************************************************************
If you like this post share it with your friends, and sign up to follow this blog by email. Thank you.
My first book, Perverted Truth Exposed: How Progressive Philosophy has Corrupted Science was published in 2016. It is available in print and ebook, on line only, through World Net Daily store, Amazon, Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble. See the companion blog at www.realscienceblog.com for related posts.