What he and others do not understand is how the economics of energy work in the real world. Solar panels and wind can never pay for themselves. He is correct, solar panels and batteries are getting cheaper but they are installed at a loss to save costs by generating less electricity with fossil fuels where that is economically feasible. Doesn't save any costs with transmission. We should be full 100% nuclear by now but it was the DEMOCRATS who put the brakes on that.
Those solar farms he showed were probably paid for by federal money, thus the taxpayer eating the cost for the operator so they could make a profit out the gate and when some politician makes a speech and says solar is profitable, he isn't lying. It is. But lies by omission that the govt ate the cost instead of the operator.
He also left out the cost and labor extracting of rare earth elements and instead focused on recycling used batteries. Again that is correct, we do recycle old batteries to make new ones. But the majority of rare earth elements are mined in Africa and China using slave labor. Child slave labor in Africa and political slave labor in China. There are large amounts of rare earth elements in the US but cost of extraction is far more expensive.
One thing I do agree with him 100% is ethanol. Growing food for car fuel is incredibly stupid and that only happened because the large agricorps own the food market and the small farmer got thrown a bone by Dubya the Inbred.
Then there's the cost of disposal. Panels have a lifespan, and when they've lost a great deal of their efficiency the get replaced. Removing the materials from those panels is not easy or cheap as everything is all mashed together. It's like lithium battery recovery, you're always going to lose something when tearing it down.
Some small amount of panels are sold to hobbyists that want to use them for whatever, but when they have 50% of their new efficiency no producer is going to want them.
That being said, the co-op utility back where my folks live have covered their substation right of way areas with panels. That's a perfect use of that space since nothing else can be there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
Economic feasibility is the question here and one he avoids answering. Could be on purpose but I doubt it. I don't think he understands and to be fair, I understand the basics enough to know he is wrong. He presents the recycling batteries and solar panels as a closed loop and that is not how recycling works. Never has and never will.
Absolutely. You can never get out 100% of what goes in, and there are energy costs to getting that little bit out. I'm sure processes will become better with time, but right now it's terribly inefficient.
