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Unfounded concerns about photovoltaic toxicity and waste slowing decarbonization

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Re: Unfounded concerns about photovoltaic toxicity and waste slowing decarbonization

#81

Post by hbossy »

hannob wrote: post #8
Gasp0de wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because some people make billions by utilizing or selling "free" energy from fossil fuels? Companies extract these, they often don't pay for the energy (just the cost of extraction) and can sell them at huge profits. The cost of pollution is then also not paid by them.

That is certainly true, but it's not a full explanation. I recently was at an information event from our local electricity provider about wind energy projects. And there are those people... There was a conversation going on like: "The people I talked to don't want these things." Event moderator: "What are the reasons?" Guy: "They simply don't want them." And I am pretty sure that was no fossil fuel lobbyist. It was j…

I think it's just coming from experience. They remember how every past attempt at making cars eco-friendly eventually resulted in worse personal experience via taxes, prices and worse repairability, so any new one gets a "no" by default.

Re: Unfounded concerns about photovoltaic toxicity and waste slowing decarbonization

#82

Post by jacquesm »

hef19898 wrote: post #79
Detrytus wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Coal and gas plants are closing because they cannot compete on price with solar/wind + battery storage. First of all, I'm not aware of any large scale battery storage facilities anywhere, they are prohibitively expensive. Second, coal and gas plant's main cost, at least in EU, is carbon tax. So the fact that they can't compete on price is a result of political decision, not of any shortcomings of the technology it…

Gas can't compete, because gas is too expensive. Coal actually could compete, it usually was the second type of power plant able to sell on the electricity markets, becasue CO2 certificates are just dirt cheap, way to cheap to move the needle, and coal as fuel was the least expensive (sun and win being free).

Sun and wind aren't 'free' but they have the lowest operating costs compared to alternatives and they have the lowest capital cost per W of installed power. But you probably should account for a storage component as well once those hit deployment in volume. I'm holding out for the next generation of storage batteries and then I'll pull the trigger on a system large enough to do both arbitrage and cover the day/night cycle of this house for a week. That works out to 70 to 100 KWh of storage, which is right now both too expensive to make sense (we still have net metering here) and a safety concern. But I expect the next generation storage to both be substantially cheaper and safer than what's out there today.

Re: Unfounded concerns about photovoltaic toxicity and waste slowing decarbonization

#83

Post by extraduder_ire »

robertlagrant wrote: post #19
mathieuh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's become a culture war issue. In the UK London introduced a so-called Ultra-Low Emissions Zone recently, and Wales has dropped 30 mph speed limits down to 20, which prompted the right-wing populist government to come out as being "on the side of drivers" and to call decarbonisation schemes "tyrannical". They've now gone full swivel-eyed loon and are rowing back many climate change commitments. It seems to me that,…

ULEZ isn't decarbonisation. It mostly targets diesel cars due to NO. And it doesn't ban them; it just costs £12/day to drive there. So suddenly millions of drivers, who bought diesel cars because that was the thing they were supposed to buy according to the government, now own cars that are worth -£2000/year. It might seem that everything is along political lines because you view it that way. There are non-political…

Can one not just add an after-market adblue filter onto the car to hit the emission requirements? Like, do a reverse VW on it.

Re: Unfounded concerns about photovoltaic toxicity and waste slowing decarbonization

#84

Post by extraduder_ire »

tpm wrote: post #71
robertlagrant wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ULEZ isn't decarbonisation. It mostly targets diesel cars due to NO. And it doesn't ban them; it just costs £12/day to drive there. So suddenly millions of drivers, who bought diesel cars because that was the thing they were supposed to buy according to the government, now own cars that are worth -£2000/year. It might seem that everything is along political lines because you view it that way. There are non-political…

Millions? The number of daily non-compliant cars entering the ULEZ zone went from 36k in March 2019 to 12k in December 2020 according to Wikipedia. I seriously doubt the expansion did hit millions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_Low_Emission_Zone

I think the implication is that wherever you have your car, it's worth less because it costs money to drive it in london, which directly affects its resale value. Pretty indirect though.

Re: Unfounded concerns about photovoltaic toxicity and waste slowing decarbonization

#85

Post by hef19898 »

throwaway60742 wrote: post #42
kjksf wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the reason then those people are misinformed. Coal and gas plants are closing because they cannot compete on price with solar/wind + battery storage. The cost advantage is not true everywhere but the future is clear. Coal and gas will not become cheaper. Solar and wind is most expensive today it'll ever be. Storage in particular is so early in the cycle that we can expect the cost will drop at least in half…

No way they are misinformed, look at German power mix. Germany - the most vocal proponents of wind/solar - is the most polluting country in the whole EU. > Coal and gas plants are closing because they cannot compete on price with solar/wind + battery storage. That did not happen anywhere in Europe. New gas plants are being constructed right now, and coal powerplants had to be restarted when Germans dropped nuclear. >…

Can you elaborate, to a fellow (?) German, about just how a "green" political agenda will increase public health care costs? Or a re you just mixing multiple talking points (renewables bad, nuclear good, public health care bad, private health care good) without making any sense at all?

Re: Unfounded concerns about photovoltaic toxicity and waste slowing decarbonization

#86

Post by jacquesm »

wkat4242 wrote: post #64
Muromec wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is that and then there is Greenpeace campaining against nuclear non-stop because Choronobyl'.

And three mile island and Fukushima. Nuclear has some serious concerns that are clearly not addressed enough. Usually this is when the low death toll is brought up but it's not just about deaths. It's about environmental destruction. And the potential to do so in the far future through its waste. I don't think we should move away from nuclear altogether but use it as a buffer only for the times when the real green so…

And Windscale (whitewashed to 'Sellafield') and an endless series of near-catastrophes.

Re: Unfounded concerns about photovoltaic toxicity and waste slowing decarbonization

#87

Post by thelastgallon »

weevil wrote: post #3

I'm honestly at a loss as to why some people (and organizations) are hell-bent on hampering attempts to decarbonize, and amplifying whatever tiny negatives they can whether they're real or not, as though nothing less than 100% perfect is worth replacing the awful status quo.

We don't find it surprising that there is a huge ecosystem of fake reviews for 2 dollar trinkets on Amazon. Fossil fuels are wealth extraction from everyone on the planet to fossil fuel overlords. This game must go on.

First, fossil fuels are not viable without massive subsidies but we almost never this statistic in the news. This is trillions of dollars in subsidies and growing! Last year, fuels that drive climate change and pollute the air were underpriced to the tune of $7 trillion. [1].

We will see so much news of how land is being used for solar, but nobody talks about 40 million acres for ethanol, which is a small additive to fossil fuels and the agricultural subsidies. Worldwide, this is 100 million acres. So much talk about food inflation, these 100 million acres could be used to grow food instead. but "news" don't want to talk about an easy win of stopping fossil fuel subsidies, which will also bring the prices.

Facts like fossil fuel shipping account for 40% of global shipping, account for the largest water withdrawals[3], account for 10 million pollution deaths (but we do see 1.5 birds killed by wind turbines, lets never talk about the billions of birds killed by cats or buildings), these are never part of the conversation.

Lets also never talk about the easiest metrics to use is deaths per TWH, renewables and nuclear are 2000x better.[4]

I put together a comparison worksheet for kids [5] (fossils vs renewables), any 10+ year old can work through this sheet and figure out that fossil fuels are a horrible idea.

Lastly, and more importantly, lets never talk about price-fixing Oil, a commodity doesn't behave like most commodities do, Eg: Salt (and lots of industrial products manufactured at scale - millions of tons) which is so incredibly cheap that no one thinks or budgets for buying salt[6]. OPEC has a monopoly and pricing power and they destroy demand to keep prices up. Nobody has a problem with this!

And, lets spend trillions of dollars on military budgets to protect oil supply. Why don't we let the oil companies pay for defense of their own infrastructure? This is not factored into any of the subsidies.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-16/climat...

[2] https://qz.com/2113243/forty-percent-of-all-shipping-cargo-c....

[3] U.S. thermoelectric plants are the largest source of U.S. water withdrawals, accounting for more than 40% of total U.S. water withdrawals in 2015: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50698#:~:tex....

[4] https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...

[5] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y_VFQC5qMuLYKoqLg0ooKIgV...

[6] https://www.amazon.com/Turning-Oil-Into-Salt-Independence/dp...

Re: Unfounded concerns about photovoltaic toxicity and waste slowing decarbonization

#88

Post by hef19898 »

jacquesm wrote: post #82
hef19898 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas can't compete, because gas is too expensive. Coal actually could compete, it usually was the second type of power plant able to sell on the electricity markets, becasue CO2 certificates are just dirt cheap, way to cheap to move the needle, and coal as fuel was the least expensive (sun and win being free).

Sun and wind aren't 'free' but they have the lowest operating costs compared to alternatives and they have the lowest capital cost per W of installed power. But you probably should account for a storage component as well once those hit deployment in volume. I'm holding out for the next generation of storage batteries and then I'll pull the trigger on a system large enough to do both arbitrage and cover the day/night…

True, sun and wind aren't free. In terms of energy markets (too lazy to look up the up to dtae details, so it might have changed in the last 5 years), only the variable costs for producing one kWh of electricity are taking into account (so basically fuel plus CO2 certificates, over simplified a bit). In that sense, sun and wind are free. Don't ask me why fix costs aren't considered...

Grid stabilization is priced in, usually using specific contracts with producers and large consumers (read steel, chemical, paper industrial sites and other with huge electricity needs). In that regard, the European markets are working fine and as intended.

Long term, we have to solve the issue of electricity storage. Short term, we are totally fine with renewables producing <60% of our electricity, and on some days even more. Base load became much less of a problem, most hige consumers in the industrial sectors found ways to be much more flexible in their demand, driven in no small degree by being to make extra money on the spot markets (and we talk 10s of millions here).

Re: Unfounded concerns about photovoltaic toxicity and waste slowing decarbonization

#89

Post by jacquesm »

hef19898 wrote: post #88
jacquesm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sun and wind aren't 'free' but they have the lowest operating costs compared to alternatives and they have the lowest capital cost per W of installed power. But you probably should account for a storage component as well once those hit deployment in volume. I'm holding out for the next generation of storage batteries and then I'll pull the trigger on a system large enough to do both arbitrage and cover the day/night…

True, sun and wind aren't free. In terms of energy markets (too lazy to look up the up to dtae details, so it might have changed in the last 5 years), only the variable costs for producing one kWh of electricity are taking into account (so basically fuel plus CO2 certificates, over simplified a bit). In that sense, sun and wind are free. Don't ask me why fix costs aren't considered... Grid stabilization is priced in,…

Yes, consumer flexibility will be a huge part of the solution. You can already see this with power intensive industries operating when power is cheap (or even on surplus power) and reducing or even stopping their output when power is expensive. Obviously not all industries have this option, sometimes energy is only a small fraction of their expenses. But it is good to see at least this part of the market aspect of energy production and consumption operating as it should. Meanwhile I'm sitting pretty with 7.7 MWh net returned to the grid on my private installation.

Re: Unfounded concerns about photovoltaic toxicity and waste slowing decarbonization

#90

Post by myspy »

theK wrote: post #20
hannob wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is certainly true, but it's not a full explanation. I recently was at an information event from our local electricity provider about wind energy projects. And there are those people... There was a conversation going on like: "The people I talked to don't want these things." Event moderator: "What are the reasons?" Guy: "They simply don't want them." And I am pretty sure that was no fossil fuel lobbyist. It was j…

I have a pet theory about that. The theory is that it is not the facts or the topic of Eco-Things. I think generally we are at a point where it is too easy for normal people to be against things and eco friendly things are just the lowest hanging fruit. Normal people nowadays are much more stressed with the world at large, overstimulated by doomscrolling all night, obesse or unhealthy, locked in some financial treadm…

Hence why the gap between the poor and the richest people must be closed. Take the money from the billionaires and use it to rebuild the middle class and lift up the lower class.
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