Part 3

Expanding Industry
As the so-called renewable energy industry expands—largely because of massive subsidies from the Biden administration—so does the waste on the back end.

Solar generation capacity is forecast to increase by more than 38 percent in 2024, according to a Dec. 12th report  by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), a U.S. government agency. Wind energy capacity is forecast to increase by 4.4 percent.

Despite this notable surge in deployment of renewable energy systems, America's electric generation in 2022 was primarily (about 60 percent) from fossil fuels—coal, natural gas, petroleum, and other gases, according to the EIA.

Renewable energy sources accounted for about 21 percent and 18 percent was from nuclear energy. An additional fraction was from small-scale solar systems.
Solar panels have a life span of up to 30 years. Understandably, some environmental organizations are raising the alarm.

"If solar and nuclear produce the same amount of electricity over the next 25 years that nuclear produced in 2016, and the wastes are stacked on football fields, the nuclear waste would reach the height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa," California-based Environmental Progress states.

"The solar waste would reach the height of two Mt. Everests."
The number of retired wind turbine blades is expected to reach 9,000 per year over the next five years, according to a 2022 analysis published by Chemical and Engineering News.

Mr. Morgan said he's keeping pace with the inbound waste for now and the company is scaling up operations, including construction of a large-scale facility in Texas. Carbon Rivers has also broadened its scope into anything "composite-based," including glass fiber and even aerospace parts.

Part 4

E-Waste
Another area of waste—electronic waste, commonly known as e-waste—is growing at an exponential rate. It's the fastest-growing solid waste stream in the world and includes renewable items such as solar panels and electric vehicle (EV) batteries.
Only a small portion is being recycled.

One analysis from 2019 released this year showed that of the 53.6 million tons of e-waste produced globally, barely 17 percent was recycled.

"People think plastic is the waste boogeyman ... but e-waste is still growing," Paul Williams, vice president of communications for recycling company ERI, told a news source.

Focused on breaking down and recycling all kinds of e-waste, Mr. Williams said ERI maintains a "military grade" level of data destruction when it comes to electronics.
Privacy protection is a huge concern with e-waste.

"It becomes not just an environmental issue, not just a human rights issue, it's also a cyber security issue. A lot of technology today contains private data," he said.
In the early days of e-waste disposal, negligent companies handled e-waste in a way that left the door wide open to data theft. "What we found were these unscrupulous types were just shipping this stuff to developing nations ... and it was a huge privacy challenge because of the data," Mr. Williams said.

Data security preparations must also be made for EVs, and not just their potentially volatile batteries, but also for the onboard computers in EVs when they reach the end of their life.

"Cars are particularly scary because the type of data that is captured is very personal. It knows your routes, the weight, and sizes of the people sitting in the seats of the car," he said. "It's kind of scary to think about." While ERI isn't seeing a lot of solar panels or EV-related battery waste just yet, Mr. Williams said they're ready for it.

"They will ultimately come to our door. We don't turn any e-waste away."
He said great strides have been made in the past two decades regarding the public's disposal of e-waste.

In the early 2000s, when ERI was first getting started, Mr. Williams says everyone had "old TVs in their garage or attic. People didn't know what to do with them."
The same goes for the younger generations with retired cellphones. But he says attitudes have changed over the past 10 to 15 years, and much of that has to do with the data security challenges involved with e-waste.

Mr. Williams isn't daunted by the coming influx of solar panels and EV components.
"Even with lithium-ion batteries and solar panels, they aren't the last mile. We know there will be something new at some point." He said transparency has been an issue with companies claiming to recycle e-waste in years past, with some advertising eco-friendly solutions while secretly dumping their e-waste in landfills.

"The most important thing, really, is transparency. When ERI started, we were literally mounting cameras on our ceilings. Nothing goes to landfill when we work on it," Mr. Williams said.

Domino Effect
Recycling dead solar panels, EV batteries, and wind turbine parts are major components of the waste problem, but supportive infrastructure is also impacted as alternative energy production ramps up.

Chief among this infrastructure are electrical transformers, which industry insiders say there's a skyrocketing demand for both new and reconditioned units.
The wait for a new transformer is months, or even a year, says Clayton Saunderson, director of inventory and purchasing at Maddox Industrial Transformers, which reconditions transformers.

Reconditioning and returning existing units from solar farms have become an integral part of Maddox's business, Mr. Saunderson told a reporter.

"We buy from pretty much anyone and everyone. There's enormous demand," he said.
Right now, demand for transformers is exceeding supply, including within the renewables sector, Mr. Saunderson said. "Doesn't matter what segment you're in. It's really hard to get a transformer quickly ... If you have an existing project and you have a failure, a lot of times you can't wait 50 weeks," he said.

Maddox's turnaround time on a reconditioned transformer is one to four weeks.
He said renewable energy farms tend to run their transformers "pretty hard," causing them to wear down fast. Refurbishing an existing transformer is the quickest option, while recycling is a lengthier, more intensive process requiring more time and logistics to make its way back into the circular economy.

"We're able to take a product [and] bring it back to life to keep it from being disassembled or sent to a recycling facility," he said. But the EV industry demand is stretching resources even thinner.

"In the EV segment, there's a battle for EV chargers [stations]," Mr. Saunderson said, saying this additional competition for transformers needed to power EV charging stations "hamstrings" the ability to get ahead of the shortage.

"It's going to be more and more difficult to get product on the shelf," he said. "We're seeing tremendous growth. It's higher than it's ever been."

Part 5

Hazardous Material
New battery technology, especially the lithium-ions that run EVs, bring a new set of challenges and toxic chemicals to the recycling business.
"Things like nickel are carcinogenic. You don't want that ending up in a landfill," Marcus Randolph, CEO of battery recycler Ecobat, told an interviewer.

From a waste management standpoint, there's a silver lining when it comes to processing EV batteries, according to Mr. Randolph. In spite of the complex composition of EV batteries, he believes recycling will be the "clear winner" in the long run due to the short supply of key elements, such as cobalt, used in their construction.

He says the value of the minerals recovered as "black mass" from retired batteries is far too valuable to simply dump in a landfill.

It's also incredibly hazardous. "We can't keep throwing hazardous materials in landfills. And you're talking to a mining engineer," Mr. Randolph said.

However, it doesn't make EV batteries any less challenging to break down. "We stood back and said, you know, lithium batteries are our greatest threat and our greatest opportunity," he said, adding that lithium-based batteries are "a lot more complex."

Moreover, they can start fires that are impossible to extinguish through traditional methods. Mr. Randolph said that since oxygen isn't part of the combustion equation with lithium batteries, water and some conventional suppression methods won't work. This becomes particularly dangerous when more than one cell in a compromised battery ignites, creating what's known as "thermal runaway."

Baltimore County Fire Bureau Chief Tim Rostkowski told 11 News Investigates that when lithium-ion batteries go into thermal runaway, "they will generate their own heat, and they will propagate, or they will move from cell to cell to cell to cell. These batteries can get over 1,000 degrees. "If we don't cool it down quick enough, and for a long enough period of time, it will generate heat and catch itself back on fire."

And while the phenomenon is rare, it still happens. Mr. Randolph said Ecobat uses special boxes to contain and transport old or compromised EV units. This becomes critical since the logistics of moving EV batteries is a challenge in itself. "If your EV batteries are old, you're more likely to have a problem just getting them to the plant," he said. Ecobat began its journey recycling lead batteries, of which up to 98 percent of its critical components can be recycled. Meanwhile, lithium-ion batteries are trailing behind.

"People are struggling to get to 65 percent" of critical components extracted and recycled, Mr. Randolph said. He said Ecobat currently processes about 30,000 tons per year. "Three plants that run 10,000 tons per year, each," he said. And they're preparing for a mountain more as EVs become more prevalent.

This was written by George Franklin, a retired aerospace engineer. He has worked on  worked on MX (Peacekeeper) Space Shuttle, Hubble, Brilliant Pebbles, PACOSS, Space Station, MMU, B2, and the Sultan of Brunei's half billion dollar private 747.

Solar panels are at best about 20% efficient.   They convert almost 0% of the UV light that hits them.  None of the visible spectrum and only some of the IR spectrum.  At the same time as they are absorbing light they are absorbing heat from the sun.  This absorbed heat is radiated into the adjacent atmosphere.  It should be obvious what happens next.  When air is warmed it rises.  Even small differences in ordinary land surfaces are capable of creating powerful forces of weather like thunderstorms and tornadoes.  These weather phenomena are initiated and reinforced by land features as they are blown downwind.  It is all too obvious to me what will happen with the heat generated by an entire solar farm.  Solar farms will become thunderstorm and tornado incubators and magnets.

Solar panels are dark and and they emit energy to the space above them when they are not being radiated.  This is known as black-body radiation.  Satellites flying in space use this phenomenon to cool internal components.  If they didn't do this they would fry themselves.

So solar farms not only produce more heat in summer than the original land that they were installed on, but they also produce more cooling in winter, thus exacerbating weather extremes.

So I conclude with this.  There is nothing green about green energy except the dirty money flowing into corrupt pockets. There is no such thing as green energy.  The science doesn't exist.  The technology doesn't exist.  The engineering doesn't exist.  We are being pushed to save the planet with solutions that are worse than the problems.

Solar and wind have a huge impact on the environment and they are not sustraninable.  They take up a lot of space because they deal with diffuse energy. They need huge transmission lines because they take up a lot of space. They can't be in the city because cities can't be supported by them. So, they need to be in these different places that are optimized for how much sun and wind there is.

So, what you find is they're less than 5% of the world's energy. That's one thing. They're growing, but you notice if you look at it, they're growing in places where they have extreme government preferences. There are extreme subsidies, often mandates where you're forced to. The grid is set up so you pay the same for unreliable electricity as reliable electricity, which totally works in their favor.

So, they depend on these extreme subsidies, and then you see that they tend to add costs to the grid. So, you have cost problems and reliability problems when they're used, which, it's pretty straightforward why. Because they're unreliable, so that means they can go almost to zero at any given time, so you need to pay for the whole backup infrastructure, which is really a life support infrastructure. So, you need to pay for two sets of infrastructure, reliable and unreliable. It's generally preferable just to pay for the reliable, cost-wise.

So, they add cost and then they also decrease reliability because people try to avoid paying for two separate infrastructures like California and Texas. So, we don't invest enough in the reliable and then we play reliability chicken and then we lose.

So, the grids are getting much worse. Through the US, we have all these grid problems that we didn't have 20 years ago because we're using this "amazing" solar and wind. And then on top of this, this is only for electricity, which is, about a fifth or a quarter of the world's machines are running on electricity. The rest of them run on transportation machines that directly burn fossil fuels, industrial heat machines, so very high levels of heat that directly burn fossil fuels, and then residential heat machines that directly burn fossil fuels.

And so, solar and wind are having all sorts of failures, even with electricity, let alone these non-electricity uses of fossil fuels that are non-electricity because it's more cost-effective to do them by directly burning fossil fuels than electricity.

The insurance for electric cars cost out of this world.  They also consume tires like no tomorrow because they weight so much. 

https://youtu.be/CvMfWUo61Ck?si=ldcxYk6sJqU4cmot

Quote from: Herman on January 07, 2024, 11:13:50 PMSolar and wind have a huge impact on the environment and they are not sustraninable.  They take up a lot of space because they deal with diffuse energy. They need huge transmission lines because they take up a lot of space. They can't be in the city because cities can't be supported by them. So, they need to be in these different places that are optimized for how much sun and wind there is.

So, what you find is they're less than 5% of the world's energy. That's one thing. They're growing, but you notice if you look at it, they're growing in places where they have extreme government preferences. There are extreme subsidies, often mandates where you're forced to. The grid is set up so you pay the same for unreliable electricity as reliable electricity, which totally works in their favor.

So, they depend on these extreme subsidies, and then you see that they tend to add costs to the grid. So, you have cost problems and reliability problems when they're used, which, it's pretty straightforward why. Because they're unreliable, so that means they can go almost to zero at any given time, so you need to pay for the whole backup infrastructure, which is really a life support infrastructure. So, you need to pay for two sets of infrastructure, reliable and unreliable. It's generally preferable just to pay for the reliable, cost-wise.

So, they add cost and then they also decrease reliability because people try to avoid paying for two separate infrastructures like California and Texas. So, we don't invest enough in the reliable and then we play reliability chicken and then we lose.

So, the grids are getting much worse. Through the US, we have all these grid problems that we didn't have 20 years ago because we're using this "amazing" solar and wind. And then on top of this, this is only for electricity, which is, about a fifth or a quarter of the world's machines are running on electricity. The rest of them run on transportation machines that directly burn fossil fuels, industrial heat machines, so very high levels of heat that directly burn fossil fuels, and then residential heat machines that directly burn fossil fuels.

And so, solar and wind are having all sorts of failures, even with electricity, let alone these non-electricity uses of fossil fuels that are non-electricity because it's more cost-effective to do them by directly burning fossil fuels than electricity.

Don't forget what happened in Texas a few winters ago...

No sun, lots of ice, extreme cold = ruined batteries, burned up wind turbines

Them then grid went down and people and pipes froze.

Quote from: Frood on January 08, 2024, 07:55:30 PMDon't forget what happened in Texas a few winters ago...

No sun, lots of ice, extreme cold = ruined batteries, burned up wind turbines

Them then grid went down and people and pipes froze.

Texas has a lot of unreliable wind power. The transmission of wind power is so expensive as they are typically further from population centers.

Quote from: Herman on January 08, 2024, 09:58:31 PMTexas has a lot of unreliable wind power. The transmission of wind farms is so expensive as they are typically further from population centers.

True, but the issue at the time was the wind turbine lithium battery packs going dead at below freezing temps and the rotors icing up and seizing. I believe some of them erupted into flames because of it.

That loss of generation combined with increased use of household heaters in order to keep uninsulated pipes from freezing/bursting became a doom spiral.

And solar field plants produced next to nothing during those atmospheric conditions..

You have to mine, somewhere on earth, 500,000 pounds of minerals and rock to make one battery.

North American regulations make mining difficult, so most of it is done elsewhere, polluting those countries. Some mining is done by children. Some is done in places that use slave labor.

Even if those horrors didn't exist, mining itself adds lots of carbon to the air.

If you're worried about C02 emissions, the electric vehicle has emitted 10 to 20 tons of carbon dioxide from the mining, manufacturing and shipping before it even gets to your driveway.

Volkswagen published an honest study [that points out] that the first 60,000 miles or so you're driving an electric vehicle, that electric vehicle will have emitted more carbon dioxide than if you just drove a conventional vehicle.

You would have to drive an electric car 100,000 miles to reduce emissions by just 20% or 30%, which is not nothing, but it's not zero.

By the end of 2028, you will not be able to purchase anything with a gasoline or LP powered engine in California. BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Quote from: Lokmar on January 08, 2024, 10:36:29 PMBy the end of 2028, you will not be able to purchase anything with a gasoline or LP powered engine in California. BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I thought it was 2035? In Canada, Justine has mandated that twenty percent of cars are ev in two years. It goes up steadily until it reaches one hundred percent of sales in 2035. It will never happen though.

Quote from: Herman on January 08, 2024, 10:48:15 PMI thought it was 2035? In Canada, Justine has mandated that twenty percent of cars are ev in two years. It goes up steadily until it reaches one hundred percent of sales in 2035. It will never happen though.

I should have stipulated "small engine". For example, emissions from gas and LP powered portable generators go to ZERO after 2028. Cali is SOOOOOOO FUK'd! 

Look up CARB/SORE emissions. What a fukin joke!

https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/news/carb-approves-updated-regulations-requiring-most-new-small-road-engines-be-zero-emission-2024

It takes a lot of energy to charge an electric vehicle.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/282940588039169