Too many people are either for or against renewables for political, emotional, or quasi-religious reasons. They cherry pick "facts" to support their POV.
If renewables are judged solely on their merits using completely objective scientific metrics and true factual data, the results are this: Wind is completely non-viable for a variety of reasons. These include economic and environmental reasons.
Maybe far less viable than most people think, yes. But I don’t think it’s a worthless tech. There are places on the planet, particularly where wind blows often, where it might make sense to add some capacity. It’ll never be enough power to replace any other source though.
Solar is also non-viable at this time. The concept itself IS sound, provided the solar arrays are as close as possible to the point of use and mounted on an existing structure. However, the energy intensiveness of solar cell manufacture (mainly using fossil fuel energy), the cells' deterioration and limited useful life span, high cost, and lack of practical, sustainable, environmentally sound and cost effective energy storage to overcome its intermittent output are nails in the solar coffin. The problems listed in the previous sentence also apply to wind, but wind has additional problems which cannot be solved with any technological advancements.
This gets down to opinion on what “viable” is. If it means completely replacing fossil fuels, I agree; solar is incapable. However, I do think solar will continue to be implemented in a distributed network of home systems. I also don’t think the environmental concerns are going to affect it much.
I actually suspect home battery storage technology to progress to a point where solar + storage makes serious economic sense, at least in sunnier parts of the world.
Geothermal power is usable, but the places on the planet where it is available are limited. Energy yield per area is also relatively low in most places which makes it impractical for large scale electricity generation. Most geothermal is used for heating. Thats still a good thing, as every BTU of heat derived from geothermal is a BTU that doesnt have to be generated by the combustion of fossil fuel.
Its great if you live in Iceland lol.
Speaking of combustion, biomass is another non-starter. It has its uses on small scales, but it will never be able to replace fossil energy. There are biofuel methods using algae that could replace liquid fossil fuels, but the algae farms would cover an enormous amount of land. And a high yield heat source would be needed to process the resulting oil into synthetic crude.
Agreed.
That pretty much means nuclear power. However, on paper it could conceivably replace petroleum for transportation and chemical industry uses. It would be a heck of a lot better than electric cars using lithium-based battery technologies. Or any known battery technology, for that matter.
Nuclear makes great sense in tectonically quiescent places with stable, first-world geopolitics and, ideally, low water tables.
It’s not as optimal once we start making exceptions to any of those rules. Russia/Ukraine just had a bit of a geopolitical scare. Nations like Iran and North Korea probably shouldn’t have plutonium. Fukushima was a failure of a geopolitically-stable first world nation to properly engineer for the location. Same for Diablo Canyon, which thankfully hasn’t yet had a disaster.
On the other hand, in places like Canada, France, the great plains of the US, Australia, and others it can make great sense, provided there’s a sensible (I.e., French) method of dealing with the waste. Biased individuals often talk about the waste issues with solar and ignore them with nuclear and vice versa.
That brings us to the sole viable renewable energy source. One which has been used for thousands of years, AAMOF: hydro. Hydropower is actually sustainable, cost effective, and mostly ecologically sound. The last can be debated, and there is some ecological harm caused by damming a river. The amount of harm depends on how the un-dammed river was used by wildlife. A river used by salmon to spawn would be devastating to the fish if it were dammed., for example. The fact that water released from a reservoir is often colder than the river water before damming is also a problem. So is erosion. OTOH, controlling flooding is a positive aspect for humans, along with energy generation. Not to mention having the reservoir also act as a water source for drinking and agriculture. Many reservoirs become habitats for other types of aquatic life and waterfowl, and even become water sources for local land wildlife. So, hydro is a mixed bag. But for sustained renewable energy production and long term minimal environmental harm, it’s about as good as it gets. Which explains why its been used for millenia for powering simple machines and in modern times for electrical generation.
Hydro is, overall, a fantastic energy source. I agree. However, like you said, its potential is mostly already tapped out in the US. I seem to recall a paper from a few years ago where an agency used GIS software to find dams which 1) lacked a power generation facility, and 2) had enough head for some minimum threshold of power generation. Adding power generation to these existing dams seems like a no brainer to me.
I will elaborate some more on the downsides of dams: like nuclear, they can be big geopolitical and disaster liabilities. We saw such a disaster in Ukraine recently. We are seeing a conflict develop between Ethiopia and Egypt due to Ethiopia’s damming activities. China’s Three Gorges dam is (thankfully) a major weak point in its geopolitical posturing against Taiwan. Dams can pose serious safety threats to human life in the events of war or natural disasters. Hydro makes great sense in places like Norway.
On the environmental side, dams ruin riparian ecosystems. They block sediment from flowing downstream and interrupt flooding cycles which restore nutrients and sediments in areas that typically require them. This causes soil depletion and ground subsidence. Sediment also gradually collects behind dams and fills in reservoirs over time, posing serious engineering problems after several decades of operation. The water expelled downstream from dams is sediment-free and highly erosive, leading to increased downstream erosion.
Newer technologies like run-of-river, wave-float systems, etc. may have some limited utility to add some capacity, especially in third world places. Overall it’s the best source of clean energy.
, a false narrative that is sold to whatever sucker believes it…
happy and don’t buy it:
www.fisheries.noaa.gov
