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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

#71

Post by tpm »

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…

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

Re: Unfounded concerns about photovoltaic toxicity and waste slowing decarbonization

#73

Post by hef19898 »

throwaway60722 wrote: post #65
hef19898 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going niclear is such a FUD anti-renewables campaign, it is almost loughable people still fall it. New nuclear plants take decades to build, and are extremely expensive. So no, no significant nuclear capacity increase. All that campaign does, is making it harder for renewables, and thus easier for fossil fuels. Quite ingenious so, if you think about it.

They take A decade, not decades. You're the one spreading FUD. There are successful new nuclear projects built very quickly in EU. The only slow thing about nuclear is regulatory approval - hampered by EU that for many years didn't accept nuclear as "green". Is nuclear more expensive that rebuilding the electrical grid and building enough storage to handle the wind/solar peaks and use the energy later? I don't think…

The Hinkley C site was approved in 2010, it is estimated to go live in 2028. It was laready two years late in May 2022, and already overshot the budget by 50% by then. As of February 2023, the delay increased by another 15 months (resulting in the 2028 go live) and costs increased again to now 32.7 billion pounds. And already in 2020, new wind and solar utility scale projects were cheaper per kWh than Hinkley, withbsolar becoming cheaper and cheaper every year (Moore's law is still valid there).

Hinkley C is 3,260 MWe. In 2022 Europe installed a total of 41.4 GW of solar capacity, up from from 28.1 GW in 2021. That means more than 10x Hinkley C in a single year (2022), and cheaper per kWh.

Facts to found here:

https://api.solarpowereurope.org/uploads/5222_SPE_EMO_2022_f...

Nuclear is great stop gap until more renewablea are installed, not more not less.

And before ypu start, no, the German nuclear plants couldn't be run any longer (maintenance, fuel, safety), run time has already been extended multiple times, and the last nuclear exit, the badly organized one, was put in place by tze conservative CDU let government (not that you go and blame the Greens for it).

Re: Unfounded concerns about photovoltaic toxicity and waste slowing decarbonization

#74

Post by pydry »

Muromec wrote: post #29
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.

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

Financial liability on nuclear plants for nuclear disasters is capped at ~0.5% of the cost of a cleanup like Fukushima/Chernobyl because sophisticated private insurers fully understand the risks and categorically refuse to shoulder them.

Thats why the taxpayer is forced into providing free insurance for every nuclear power plant. The private sector would only ever build solar and wind and storage if externalities like this or CO2/coal pollution were fully priced in. Since the government has a vested (military) reason for wanting a thriving civilian nuclear industrial ecosystem, however, they provide lavish subsidies - some budgeted, while others (like this one) are not.

There is a lot of PR sourced from profit driven pro nuclear lobbies telling us that "contrary to popular opinion" it's totally 110% safe now though - none of which acknowledge the private sector's categorical refusal to assume the financial risks, obviously.

Presumably Greenpeace, who are apparently motivated purely by a desire to protect the environment and fully funded by donations from the environmentally conscious must be the ones who are misleading us. After all, "young climate activists" say it is being "old fashioned": https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/dear-greenpeace-nuclear...

Re: Unfounded concerns about photovoltaic toxicity and waste slowing decarbonization

#75

Post by unglaublich »

hef19898 wrote: post #61
throwaway60742 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone does. Maybe people in the US, but most EU countries don't have any fossil fuel industry to subsidize. Where I live people are against solar/wind because they want to go nuclear.

Going niclear is such a FUD anti-renewables campaign, it is almost loughable people still fall it. New nuclear plants take decades to build, and are extremely expensive. So no, no significant nuclear capacity increase. All that campaign does, is making it harder for renewables, and thus easier for fossil fuels. Quite ingenious so, if you think about it.

"Going nuclear" has been _the_ fossil fuel alternative for decades. It has been the only scalable, proven, safe energy base load generation competitor to fossil fuels. The competition between those forms of energy is going back way before the advent of windmills and solar panels.

The fossil fuel industry has a huge interest in spreading FUD around nuclear, and the few accidents have been maximally exploited to hamper the development of nuclear. All the while, it has been known full well that fossil fuels have devastating impact on air quality and climate. Air pollution from fossil fuels alone is estimated at killing >3 million people per year. A great many disasters involving oil and fossil fuels have occurred, killing many more millions.

Yet, we act like nuclear is the danger, but we're happy to accept burning fossil fuels in the midst of our societies and offer up millions of lives each year to satisfy the lords of the fossil fuel industry.

Re: Unfounded concerns about photovoltaic toxicity and waste slowing decarbonization

#76

Post by stinos »

littlestymaar wrote: post #70
V__ wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not, it's not even close. It's better by a factor of 10 to 20. [1] [1] https://energy.utexas.edu/news/nuclear-and-wind-power-estima...

Your figures have nothing to do with deploying solar panels in northern US / Europe. These are average numbers, that includes the panels deployed in Arizona or Australia. Solar is a good idea when you put in it the right place (like a desert), but not when you put in in the British Isles or in Denmark, that's the point I'm making.

Fair enough perhaps, but in any case: please you point us to the numbers for that?

Seeing the annual output of a typcial rather small 5kW peak home PV installation in Western Europe or even Denmark, it just seems unlikely that it would not offset whatever emissions it takes during its mining/production/shipment/installation during its lifetime.

Re: Unfounded concerns about photovoltaic toxicity and waste slowing decarbonization

#77

Post by hef19898 »

svnt wrote: post #51
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 think it is mostly a confusion of identity. We are used to the people pushing against technological progress being someone other than older and somewhat tech-capable men. These people have been holding out and formed their arguments back when they first learned about renewables, which was twenty or more years ago. Technology has continued to progress but their positions ossified early. Now that the future they deni…

I read a comment lately along the lines of "80% of conservative outrage is caused by understanding how things work fornthe very first time". There is some truth to it.

Re: Unfounded concerns about photovoltaic toxicity and waste slowing decarbonization

#78

Post by jacquesm »

kjksf wrote: post #41
throwaway60742 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't want to pay for it. The cost of the wind/solar project itself is not the full story - you also need energy storage, and that's very expensive. You also need to rebuild the electrical grid to handle the peak power output to be able to store it. In EU countries, at least part of these very significant costs are paid for by everyone - not just the company operating the wind/solar projects who profit from it…

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…

> Storage in particular is so early in the cycle that we can expect the cost will drop at least in half. We've barely started making battery storage, the industry has 100x growth ahead.

You can add at least two more zeros there, and possibly three or more. Storage right now is mostly dams and all the easy places have been done. Battery storage is really at the proof of concept state and if you take hydro out of the equation you're looking at a tenth of a percent at best.

Re: Unfounded concerns about photovoltaic toxicity and waste slowing decarbonization

#79

Post by hef19898 »

Detrytus wrote: post #68
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…

>> 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).

Re: Unfounded concerns about photovoltaic toxicity and waste slowing decarbonization

#80

Post by hef19898 »

svnt wrote: post #63
lynx23 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, its called free will, you know. I dont have to like everything, period.

Most thinking people move beyond this position. An arbitrary position is no position at all.

A weak opinion, strongly hold. Or some such.
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