The awful part is that in the short/medium term this means a massive increase in emissions. New devices, infrastructure, mining projects, resource extraction, etc are all needed to power this. All in the aims of some future term decrease in our emissions. If we half-ass this it could be very destructive
If by "emissions" you mean the absolute level of CO2 or other pollutants emitted, then the emissions required to build renewable infrastructure will be much smaller than the total emissions for all other causes. It won't be a "massive increase", given what we've already done.
Or if you mean the annual level of emissions, it's also not clear to me how building renewables causes that level to increase, let alone massively. We already have massive annual emissions, and diverting some industrial production to building renewable energy infrastructure won't cause emissions to go up, since those resources would be diverted away from some other use that would also cause emissions.
Well... I don't know what to tell you but it is. In the 2016 election both Biden and Warren (two candidates that proposed a "green manufacturing" plan for climate change) both admitted that in the short term their plans would lead to a net increase in emissions. And in fact, in 2022 we saw the EU emissions decrease by 2.5%, China's decrease by 0.2%, but the US increase by 0.8% in large part due to their approach to climate change solutions.
> then the emissions required to build renewable infrastructure will be much smaller than the total emissions for all other causes
Let's look at electric vehicles as a more concrete example. A lot of people don't realize that around 10% of lifetime emissions of a vehicle are in its initial manufacturing... for an ICE vehicle. The production of an EV is much more expensive due to their batteries. And in fact over 30% of its lifetime emissions could be in the manufacturing of the battery alone. This is why, in the US, it takes around 28,069-68,160 miles before an EV is actually less polluting than an ICE vehicle.
That's a technology-specific example, but similar dynamics play out in many other ways. One simple one is just... infrastructure. The simple fact that we already have gas stations. We need to invest massive amounts of resources in order to build all these new electric vehicle charging stations
Yes we will (hopefully) soon see something like "economies of scale for emissions" come into play but it's hard to deny that there's a massive upfront cost to simply "building new stuff"
Maybe try linking to reputable research and not something produced by an undergraduate student who says stupid shit like "....and families typically sell their cars before then!" ...yeah and where do you think the car goes? Car Heaven? Of course not. The average age of a passenger car in the US is twelve years old.
"Well AKSHUALLLLLLY" comments like yours trying to "gotcha" efforts to improve carbon impact and efficiency are not helping things. Stop being part of the problem, start being part of the solution.
>in the short/medium term this means a massive increase in emissions
No it doesn't. The resources used to build solar/wind/etc isn't even a rounding error compared to global consumption. Nobody is going to crush their brand new car to replace it with an electric one. Heavy industry is going to replace things on more or less regular replacement schedules not just dump capital assets to switch over unless there is a strong economic incentive.
We are, in fact, going to half-ass it. Fossil fuel things are going to be replaced with renewable electric things not to avoid emissions but to replace old equipment when it becomes an economically reasonable thing to do.
For example, in electric vehicles, the initial production emits much more than a conventional gas car (mostly due to the battery). A lot of people don't realize that as much as 30% of a vehicle's lifetime emissions can be in the initial production alone. As a result it takes ~28-68.2k miles (in the US) for an EV to emit comparatively fewer emissions
Are you looking for a number like that? If you are then you would have to more narrowly defined your use-case. There are far too many factors, infrastructures, conditions, technologies, etc to consider
The Argonne model relied on in the article you linked is quite dated at this point and has its limitations (which are acknowledged by the authors of it themselves).
I see, so that 28K number looks solid, the 68K upper bound applies to a scenario where someone doesn't switch to an EV but buys one and still keeps driving an ICE vehicle too, which seems odd - I would think many drivers could use an EV for all their shorter trips (certainly shopping, likely commuting), but paying to register/license an extra car just for the occasional long trip doesn't seem very practical.
Yeah I don't think it's that much either. I feel a lot of readers are reading my comments as if I'm being hostile towards renewables and downvoting me because of that assumption.
I am not opposed to renewables, nor am I trying to argue that "it takes [insert amount of miles that's well within the average lifespan of a car] for EVs to break even" somehow implies "EVs bad"
Obviously I don't support the continued usage of oil and coal as energy resources
Yes, that's factored in. The average coal plant outputs 830 MW, and obviously nobody is building wind turbines that large. That's why wind power installations are called "wind farms".
The figure I recently read was that solar panels are recouping their manufacturing carbon impact in less than a year when compared to conventional fossil mix.
