Remix.run Logo
yeureka 7 hours ago

I recently read, and recommend a book titled "Here Comes the Sun" by Bill McKibben. There's a passage where a calculation is made of the amount of minerals that have to be mined in order to build renewable energy to cover all current energy needs. This quantity is huge. However it is equivalent in mass to the amount of fossil fuels that are extracted every year. The major difference is that the equipment for renewable energy will last decades whereas the fossil fuels are burned and need to be dug up constantly, for ever.

thatsit 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Solar panels etc. will last decades and can and will be recycled afterwards. Further, most materials needed for renewable energy infrastructure (iron, lithium) are highly abundant on earth. Most of the suppliers work to use cheaper (=more abundant) materials in their products, replacing lithium with sodium in batteries and silver with copper in solar panels. Wind turbine blades are produced now using re-solvable resins.

pfdietz 3 hours ago | parent [-]

And iron (steel) is the most recyclable material we have.

jbl0ndie 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Only there is no forever when you're talking about a finite resource, like fossil fuels.

specialist 2 hours ago | parent [-]

They're talking about our nascent circular economy.

Recycling now recovers >95% of raw minerals (and will continue to improve).

The learning curves for battery and solar tech will more than make up the for the shortfall.

Meaning at some point in the near future (2050 IIRC), humanity will have mined all the lithium it'll ever need.

Also, in the same time frame, it'll be economical to mine our garbage dumps. Further reducing the need to extract raw materials.

addhochohoc 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

But it creates enough cash to redirect all ire away to weakly lobbying industries, like aggrarian-sector or other weakly lobbied sectors like nuclear.