In an article posted on “The Hill” January 20 2021 Dr. Scott Tinker, professor and the director of the Bureau of Economic Geology at The University of Texas at Austin, argued that going green will require more than simple electrification.
Dr. Tinker acknowledges the benefits of inexpensive energy with the need to ‘go green’ while bringing up important topics:
- Solar and wind have high surface area requirements with a high land use requirement.
- Existing power plants firing on fossil fuels, including those fired on natural gas, will need to be decommissioned and replaced.
- New power Plants will have to be designed not just for base load but for peak power plus power make up for intermittent solar and wind. This will boost the price of power explaining why in California with abundant solar and geothermal energy the consumer price of power is higher than fossil fuel jurisdictions.
- Electrification will require batteries to keep everything running which must be replaced constantly with high carbon metals, chemicals and toxic materials required.
- China controls 50 to 70 percent of global lithium, cobalt and polysilicon and is aggressively acquiring other mined materials to make batteries, turbines and solar panels.
In conclusion Dr. Tinker makes the case that to “go green” we must “go honest” to address the real energy challenges before us.
Reference:
Tinker, S. (2021, January 20), “We must go honest to ‘go green’, The Hill.com, Link