Comment by ahhhhnoooo
17 hours ago
Then solar and wind aren't technically renewable either, because the sun is going to eventually consume the earth and explode.
Geothermal is renewable.
17 hours ago
Then solar and wind aren't technically renewable either, because the sun is going to eventually consume the earth and explode.
Geothermal is renewable.
However much solar or wind energy we use, the Sun will last exactly as long. This is not a matter of scale. Even if we were to build a photovoltaic Dyson sphere around the Sun, it would have the same lifespan.
That is not the case for geothermal. It could in theory be cooled down if exploited at a massive scale.
Saying geothermal is not renewable is not an indictment nor a criticism. Geothermal is great and we should use it more. It's just technically not renewable, but that doesn't matter.
And a new star will eventually form from the debris, so "renewable" is a function of time scale.
And after a hundred generations of this there will be no fusible material left. We can extract energy from rotating black holes until they stop, and then the universe is dead.
So solar energy is renewable over a human lifetime, not renewable over a stellar lifetime, renewable over a stellar formation cycle, not renewable over the lifetime of a universe, and renewable if universes turn out to be cyclical. And all but the first are pendantry in the context of renewable energy conversations.