
Why Renewables Can’t Save the Planet - andrenth
https://quillette.com/2019/02/27/why-renewables-cant-save-the-planet/
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blastbeat
Renewables can't save the planet from a mathematical point of view. For
example, to satisfy the current energy demands of Germany with wind energy
alone, one would need more area of land to build turbines, than Germany
actually has (and as the article states, there is still the problem of storage
for renewable energy). I didn't do the math, but I'm pretty sure that many
other developed countries simply burn more energy, that they have space
available to host renewables. To attain some kind of equilibrium, they would
need to import renewable energy from other countries, or to degrowth their
energy consumption (and therefore there economy).

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chewz
Wind turbines work close to Betz limit [1]. Worlds demand for energy grows by
circa 2,000 terawatt-hours per year. Two-megawatt turbine can produce about
0.005 terawatt-hours per annum.

With 50 acres per megawatt we would fill land area greater than the British
Isles, including Ireland every year. In 50 years it would amount to land area
of Russia. And this is just new demand.

Plus wind turbines are just concrete and steel which requires coal and produce
CO2. Hardly green energy.

A two-megawatt wind turbine weighs about 250 tonnes. Globally, it takes about
half a tonne of coal to make a tonne of steel. Add another 25 tonnes of coal
for making the cement and you’re talking 150 tonnes of coal per turbine. Now
if we are to build 350,000 wind turbines a year (or a smaller number of bigger
ones), just to keep up with increasing energy demand, that will require 50
million tonnes of coal a year. That’s about half the EU’s hard coal–mining
output.

This game of green energy is just a sideshow. Opportunity to make big money
for some, tax great unwashed and keep the game of demand/consumption/subsidies
going on.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betz%27s_law#Economic_relevanc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betz%27s_law#Economic_relevance)

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gpapilion
The author didn’t mention Fukushima. I’d be curious how that stacks against
Chernobyl and TMI.

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pier25
Anyone knows if there has been progress with thorium or cold fusion?

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Coll
Cold Fusion is completely unnecessary. It requires massive amounts of energy
to start the reaction and once it's producing any power, it produces hundreds
of times more power than we could effectively use. If the public opinion could
be changed regarding fission energy we would have more than enough. Thorium
was already developed in the 50s and 60s, we just need to implement it.

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pier25
Why aren't we using thorium then?

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efaref
Because thorium reactors don't produce weapons-grade plutonium.

