A publication by Vijay Jayaraj (M.Sc., Environmental Science, University of East Anglia, England) and a Research Contributor for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation) has published a scathing report blasting wind and solar as renewable sources.
It is worth noting that renewable crude and biochar for coal opens the door for carbon balancing of wind turbine production and a source of carbon negative lubricating oils.
Link to this article here.
Highlights:
According to United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimation of material requirements, “1 MW of wind capacity requires 103 tonnes of stainless steel, 402 tonnes of concrete, 6.8 tonnes of fiberglass, 3 tonnes of copper, and 20 tonnes of cast iron.”
As IEEE puts it, to produce 25 percent of the global electricity demand using wind energy, we would require roughly 450 million metric tons of steel. And steel is manufactured predominantly using coal, implying that we would require “fossil fuels equivalent to more than 600 million metric tons of coal.”
The process would also require 90 million metric tons of crude oil for the rotor mass and various other hydrocarbon byproducts needed for coating and turbine lubricant.
An energy industry observer points out that “state-of-the-art wind turbine blades are made of carbon fiber, which consists of layers of plastics and plastic resin, both of which are derived from oil and natural gas.”
In plain language, the production, installation, and maintenance of a wind turbine is completely dependent on fossil fuel or fossil fuel derivatives. Wind energy cannot be termed clean unless fossil fuel is also clean.
In addition to their complete dependency on fossil fuels, wind and solar energy rely on the supply of rare earth metals such as europium, lanthanum, and neodymium —mined mainly in China under environmentally disastrous conditions.
The metals emit a lot of toxins when they are mined and processed, polluting land and water resources. Even the most ardent mainstream advocates of renewable energy have acknowledged this real and grave danger that rare earth metals pose to the local environment and health in China.