I've convinced myself, after 30 years of reading almost obsessively in environmental science, engineering, and energy - almost all of it in the primary scientific literature - that the most critical factor in environmental sustainability is the energy to mass ratio as well capacity utilization.
(If you scroll through my journal on this website, you will get a small indication of the things I look at and which I share, albeit quite uselessly.)
The energy to mass ratio of solar energy is absurdly low, and the capacity utilization is also absurdly low. The big lie foisted by the so called "renewable energy" industry and its credulous supporters (who mean well, but are doing harm) is that a "watt" is a unit of energy. It is not. It's a unit of power. The lie consists of representing peak power as if it were average continuous power. It isn't.
Therefore 99% of the time when someone is talking about "100 MW of solar energy," given that the capacity utilization of solar cells is seldom more than 10% they are really talking about "10 MW" of average continuous power. Moreover if this energy is stored - which is seldom the case - some the energy is lost as waste heat.
All forms of energy that require the processing of mass have embodied energy, and this includes as well the hand waving panacea of "we'll recycle it."
Who are the "we" in this glib rote statement?
The "we" in question is actually not us at all; it's future generations, who will live in a seriously degraded environment, with far fewer resources - we have mined all the best ores of many of the most important elements in the periodic table, leaving behind only leaching tailings - and few viable energy sources.
Yet we have the unmitigated gall, the hypocrisy, the contempt, the undiluted indifference to insist that they will do what we have been unable to do and have not bothered to do in our long lives.
Since they will have little energy available to them, where is the energy to come from even to collect this "distributed" waste from "distributed energy" never mind the energy (and materials) needed to reprocess it?
We "invested" over one trillion dollars in the last ten years on this future toxic waste, solar PV cells, and another trillion on wind. I've lived through half a century of the hype about it. Combined with the equally useless and toxic wind industry, these forms of energy produced, as of 2016, less than 10 exajoules of energy out of the 576 exajoules being consumed then.
I covered the reality of so called "renewable energy," referring to the OECD World Energy Outlook in a predictably ignored post on this website:
The Growth of "Renewable" Energy Has Exceeded 2007 World Energy Outlook Projections by 55%!
Here's excerpts focusing the reality without the distraction of my derisive sarcasm:
...According to the quoted "renewables will save us" correspondent above - you hear this a lot - "coal is dead." He or she says that the industry couldn't possible survive without government support, because so called "renewable energy" is so wonderful and so cheap.
You hear this whopper a lot - from correspondents like the one I've quoted above - but the reality is somewhat different:
Irrespective of this wonderful information - and trust me, I wish it were so, that "coal is dead," since I am opposed to all dangerous fossil fuels - in 2016 according to table 2.2 - coal produced 157.2 exajoules of humanity's energy in 2016. This compares with 96.8 exajoules that it produced in 2000. This makes it the second largest form of primary energy utilized on this planet, after the dangerous fossil fuel oil, which in 2016 produced 183.7 exajoules of energy compared with 153.7 exajoules in 2000. The third largest source of primary energy is dangerous natural gas, which in 2016 produced 125.9 exajoules of energy, compared with 86.1 exajoules in 2000.
Thus in the "percent talk" with which purveyors of the "renewables are wonderful" rhetoric abuse language, the dangerous fossil fuels have increased, since the year 2000, respectively for dangerous coal, dangerous oil, and dangerous natural gas have increased respectively by 62.5%, 19.6%, and 39.2% since the year 2000.
In absolute terms, as opposed to "percent talk," dangerous coal, dangerous oil, and dangerous natural gas have increased respectively by 60.5, 30.1, and 39.2 exajoules since 2000...
...In the period between 2000 and 2016 world energy demand grew in absolute terms by 155.96 exajoules, and in percent talk, 83% of that growth was covered by dangerous fossil fuels.
In "percent talk," in 2000, 81% of the world's energy was provided by dangerous fossil fuels, in 2016, 82% of the world's energy was so provided. Thus even in "percent talk" the world's dependence on dangerous fossil fuels has not decreased; on the contrary it has increase, albeit by a small amount.
Measured in exajoules, the use of dangerous fossil fuels overall has risen by 129.7 exajoules, which is the equivalent of adding more than another United States to the world energy disaster, the United States being the nation on this planet with the highest per capita energy consumption on the planet, and nation of excess. (If the rest of the world consumed energy at the per capita rate of the United States, we'd be talking in zetajoules and not exajoules.)...
...Now let's turn to so called "other renewable energy." In 2000, "other renewable energy" - which includes solar and wind energy provided 2.5 exajoules of energy; in 2016 it provided 9.4 exajoules of energy.
Um...um...um...
I'm sure you don't want to hear this, so let's change it into "percent talk."
In "percent talk," "RENEWABLE ENERGY" grew by an astounding 275%!!!!!!!!!!!!"
The figures for nuclear, biomass and hydroelectric can be found in the original text, which frankly, I wrote in extreme anger as I approach the end of my life, - anger that lies as much with myself as with others as I was a onetime supporter of this failed experiment - over what we have done to our decendents using the lies we told ourselves.
As far as I'm concerned, the vast resources squandered on solar energy, supported by half a century of rote mindless cheering (in which, to my regret, I was once a participant), are a crime against all future generations, one of many such crimes, but a crime nonetheless.
History will not forgive us; nor should it.
Thanks for asking.
Have a pleasant Sunday afternoon.
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