Have you ever heard of "unobtanium"?
It's the magical energy mineral found on the planet Pandora in the movie, Avatar. It's
a fantasy in a science fiction script. But environmentalists think they've found it here
on earth in the form of wind and solar power.
They think all the energy we need can be supplied by building enough wind and solar farms; and
enough batteries.
The simple truth is that we can't. Nor should we want to—not if our goal is to be good
stewards of the planet.
To understand why, consider some simple physics realities that aren't being talked about.
All sources of energy have limits that can't be exceeded. The maximum rate at which the
sun's photons can be converted to electrons is about 33%. Our best solar technology is
at 26% efficiency. For wind, the maximum capture is 60%. Our best machines are at 45%.
So, we're pretty close to wind and solar limits. Despite PR claims about big gains coming,
there just aren't any possible. And wind and solar only work when the wind blows and the
sun shines. But we need energy all the time. The solution we're told is to use batteries.
Again, physics and chemistry make this very hard to do.
Consider the world's biggest battery factory, the one Tesla built in Nevada. It would take
500 years for that factory to make enough batteries to store just one day's worth of
America's electricity needs. This helps explain why wind and solar currently still supply
less than 3% of the world's energy, after 20 years and billions of dollars in subsidies.
Putting aside the economics, if your motive is to protect the environment, you might want
to rethink wind, solar, and batteries because, like all machines, they're built from nonrenewable
materials.
Consider some sobering numbers:
A single electric-car battery weighs about half a ton. Fabricating one requires digging
up, moving, and processing more than 250 tons of earth somewhere on the planet.
Building a single 100 Megawatt wind farm, which can power 75,000 homes requires some
30,000 tons of iron ore and 50,000 tons of concrete, as well as 900 tons of non-recyclable
plastics for the huge blades. To get the same power from solar, the amount of cement, steel,
and glass needed is 150% greater.
Then there are the other minerals needed, including elements known as rare earth metals.
With current plans, the world will need an incredible 200 to 2,000 percent increase in
mining for elements such as cobalt, lithium, and dysprosium, to name just a few.
Where's all this stuff going to come from? Massive new mining operations. Almost none
of it in America, some imported from places hostile to America, and some in places we
all want to protect.
Australia's Institute for a Sustainable Future cautions that a global "gold" rush for energy
materials will take miners into "…remote wilderness areas [that] have maintained high
biodiversity because they haven't yet been disturbed."
And who is doing the mining? Let's just say that they're not all going to be union workers
with union protections.
Amnesty International paints a disturbing picture: "The… marketing of state-of-the-art
technologies are a stark contrast to the children carrying bags of rocks."
And then the mining itself requires massive amounts of conventional energy, as do the
energy-intensive industrial processes needed to refine the materials and then build the
wind, solar, and battery hardware.
Then there's the waste. Wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries have a relatively short
life; about twenty years. Conventional energy machines, like gas turbines, last twice as
long.
With current plans, the International Renewable Energy Agency calculates that by 2050, the
disposal of worn-out solar panels will constitute over double the tonnage of all of today's
global plastic waste. Worn-out wind turbines and batteries will add millions of tons more
waste. It will be a whole new environmental challenge.
Before we launch history's biggest increase in mining, dig up millions of acres in pristine
areas, encourage childhood labor, and create epic waste problems, we might want to reconsider
our almost inexhaustible supply of hydrocarbons—the fuels that make our marvelous modern world
possible.
And technology is making it easier to acquire and cleaner to use them every day.
The following comparisons are typical—and instructive:
It costs about the same to drill one oil well as it does to build one giant wind turbine.
And while that turbine generates the energy equivalent of about one barrel of oil per
hour, the oil rig produces 10 barrels per hour. It costs less than 50 cents to store
a barrel of oil or its equivalent in natural gas. But you need $200 worth of batteries
to hold the energy contained in one oil barrel.
Next time someone tells you that wind, solar and batteries are the magical solution for
all our energy needs ask them if they have an idea of the cost... to the environment.
"Unobtanium" works fine in the movies. But we don't live in movies. We live in the real
world.
I'm Mark Mills, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, for Prager University.