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The current amounts of fiberglass, resins, aluminum and other chemicals – not to mention propeller blades from giant wind turbines – pose no threat current to local town dumps, but this largely ignored problem will become more of a challenge in the years ahead as the 500 million solar panels and the 73,000 wind turbines now operating in the U.S. are decommissioned and replaced.

Greens insist that reductions in carbon emissions will more than compensate for increased levels of potentially toxic garbage; others fret that renewable energy advocates have not been forthright about their lack of eco-friendly plans and the technology to handle the waste.

“Nobody planned on this, nobody had a plan to get rid of them, nobody planned for closure,” said Dwight Clark, whose company, Solar E Waste Solutions, recycles solar panels. “Nobody thought this through.”

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“They’ve been either silent, or incoherent – or just hand-wave that we should recycle all this stuff without telling us how,” said Mark Mills, executive director of the National Center on Energy Analytics. In the headlong effort to make solar and wind seem as inexpensive as possible, they have not included fees that address the eventual cost of disposal, which could leave taxpayers holding the bag.

Some renewable supporters acknowledge Mills’ point. The Alliance for Affordable Energy, which supports government-funded research on recycling panels and turbines, said the “circular economy” Mills referred to has yet to materialize.

“With the existing energy infrastructure, a lot of end-of-life questions have never been addressed,” the Alliance’s executive director, Logan Burke, told RCI. “It may be that those costs have to be embedded in the front-end, but somehow we need to make the market circular. How do we find that market at the end of their useful life?”

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Just how many panels the U.S. will dispose of or retire each year is also unclear. No clearing house keeps track of national figures, according to Meng Tao, an energy engineering professor at Arizona State University and a consultant on renewable waste issues.

The estimates can vary widely. Solar panels generally have a life expectancy of 25 years, but factors like damage and system upgrades make the number of panels coming out of circulation each year impossible to ascertain. In 2021, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which did not respond to a request for comment, estimated that between 3,000 and 6,000 panels would be retired annually through 2026.

Critics say even the high end of those numbers seems suspiciously low given the hundreds of millions of panels now in use and tens of millions yet to come.

The problem will not be confined to the U.S. Several European countries are further down the NetZero road than America, and in March, the European Union estimated it “will cumulatively amass 6-13 and 21-35 million tons of (solar) waste by 2040 and 2050, respectively.” The waste coming from wind turbines will be even greater, the EU said, sounding a hopeful note that recycling renewables will become more prominent.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Unfortunately, as I always tell everyone, energy isn't magic that comes from Hogwarts. Just because you're not seeing smoke in the sky where you live doesn't mean it ain't choking up the atmosphere somewhere else...

... or some other time in the future, for that matter.

Think, people. Think.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Don't talk to me about math, retard. I already did the arithmetic YEARS ago here.

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Originally posted by second:
You did no math and you know it.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

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Originally posted by second:
You did no math and you know it.

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I had pages worth of math and research on that.

You saw it, because I destroyed you with that data.

Your denial of that here means this conversation is over because you are interested in nothing more than lying again today.

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

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Originally posted by second:
You did no math and you know it.

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I had pages worth of math and research on that.

You saw it, because I destroyed you with that data.

Your denial of that here means this conversation is over because you are interested in nothing more than lying again today.

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You have nothing and did nothing.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

I have a ton of free time. Maybe I'll dig it up and throw it in your dumb fucking face again, so you can scurry away like the little rat you are again. Liar.

Hey Jaynez... if you read this, you're the one most likely to know where that would be at. If you have any ideas to help me find it, let me know.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Saying eagles, specifically, is probably hyperbole.

But the turbines do kill a lot of birds, and they do have temporary shutdowns because of bird deaths. My brother works in the industry and he told me this 5 or 6 years ago. I'm sure there's information online about it.




EDITED TO ADD:

I didn't know what the hell he was talking about with the whole "fumes" thing, but that seems to be Trump just dumbing it down.

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With the construction phase largely to blame, wind turbines emit slightly more particulate matter (PM), a form of air pollution, at an "exception" rate higher per unit of energy generated(kWh) than a fossil gas electricity station("NGCC"),[31][32] and also emit more heavy metals and PM than nuclear stations, per unit of energy generated.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_wind_power

So yeah, as of right now because of the construction phase, turbines emit more particulate matter than fossil fuels as well as more particulate matter and heavy metals than nuclear station for the energy they output.

I'll be honest though. He seems to be downplaying any long term gains for the environment while only focusing on the negative effects of the initial startup costs to the environment.

I would like to know more about this.

It would be nice if the media focused on the actual issues that matter rather than going for the clickbait bullshit headlines with words like "abject horror" and other such nonsense. But if they just presented the facts instead of highly editorialized rage bait they'd go out of business.




Also, in the same link, you'll see the following regarding birds:

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Sovacool estimated that in the United States wind turbines kill between 20,000 and 573,000 birds per year, and has stated he regards either figure as minimal compared to bird deaths from other causes. He uses the lower 20,000 figure in his study and table (see Causes of avian mortality table) to arrive at a direct mortality rate per unit of energy generated figure of 0.269 per GWh for wind power. Fossil-fueled power plants, which wind turbines generally require to make up for their weather dependent intermittency, kill almost 20 times as many birds per gigawatt hour (GWh) of electricity according to Sovacool. Bird deaths due to other human activities and cats total between 797 million and 5.29 billion per year in the U.S. Additionally, while many studies concentrate on the analysis of bird deaths, few have been conducted on the reductions of bird births, which are the additional consequences of the various pollution sources that wind power partially mitigates.[69]

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It's more a PETA talking point than anything else, as it seems pretty negligible. Seems that PETA is white knighting for the birds killed in wind turbines while they're killing millions of stray dogs every year.

If anybody has any stories about bald eagles specifically I'd like to see it.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I think I'm getting warmer....

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I think I'm getting warmer....

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6ix, Trump must ban house cats and even houses because those two kill more birds than wind turbines do.

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