Comment by mckn1ght
1 year ago
My mind goes to the question of what chemical byproducts come out of the manufacture of batteries or PVs. Maybe it’s not CO2, but something else. Maybe it’s easier to deal with. And maybe it’s a good tradeoff, or just in certain quantities, but if so what is that tipping point? I don’t know where to look for this kind of information.
One way to measure this is energy stored on energy invested (ESOEI). It answers how much energy is stored over the lifetime of the device compared to the energy required to build it. Lithium batteries come in at around 32.
This isn't bad, but pumped hydro is way better (704). And both options are way better than the ongoing drilling and mining and combusting required for fossil fuels.
>way better than the ongoing drilling and mining. . .
Lithium isn’t mined? Producing large/scale lithium batteries involves large-scale pollution.
It doesn't have to however. There is nothing inherent in the mining of lithium that requires CO2 emission, we already have electrical replacements for the industrial vehicles that do the mining in some mines already and its simply a matter of time to replacing the rest. All the solar companies in China run off their own panels and cover their own power needs so the actual emissions are dropping all the time.
Just because an EV being charged emits CO2 today when charged from the grid does not mean that emission wont be reducing over time, it will as the grid power comes increasing from renewable sources. So it is with the production of batteries, PVs and wind turbines a lot of these companies take this as a bootstrapping exercise you have to burn fossil fuels to make the transition but once you do you use the green power to make the next versions with considerably less impact.
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If you burned the oil in a wind turbine you would get enough electric to make up for not having that wind turbine for about 10 hours. Similar for the blades, if you burned the inputs you have days of power. The turbine is expected to last for 20 years and so while it isn't zero environmental cost compared to alternatives it is so much better we may as well call it zero.
While I'm sure some chemical byproducts come out of that, it's important to note that hydrocarbons assuredly make some really nasty stuff along the way [1]. I also wish there was a way to more easily compare these things, but the misinformation around environmental data is really next level. General, consider thinking about renewable infrastructure as more of a stock that accumulates vs fossil fuel usage which is a flow.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Alley
If it makes people happy, it must be destroying the planet!
I have no idea what kind of destruction it does. But it's an alternative for making people miserable to the point where it's an stochastic genocide, so it must be bad somehow.
Yeah, I see lots of people saying exactly the same, completely seriously, both online and live. What goes on those people head is beyond my capacity to comprehend.
I think there's a lot of institutional skepticism in general. Like the game is rigged, and alternative things are secretly nasty and fueled by ulterior motives. This is not surprising, perhaps it's even warranted.
What's really irks me is the other side of the coin, the things that get a "free pass," like (for instance) fossil fuels and their entire production chain. I see a lot of squabbles about the negatives of various energy tech, and somehow the order of magnitude difference between that and fossil fuels is brushed over, not to speak of oil companies' clear manipulation of public opinion.
> I have no idea what kind of destruction it does
This is really all you had to say, but since it doesn’t really add to the discussion, my recommendation would have been to avoid replying at all, especially considering the rest of the content…
> genocide
IME, the people that throw out buzzwords like this about every issue they come across are some of the most likely to perpetrate it, given the opportunity.
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