Think Windmills and Solar are Clean? Think Again.

We've talked many times about momentous fiasco of electricity from windmills. I invite you to visit the link if you are not familiar with their many issues. Wind energy is one of the worst decisions ever made by our political leaders.

A few days ago, this article from Grist about the giant problem of disposing of worn out solar panels was brought to my attention. Grist is a strongly left-wing publication. If they are worried about the issue, you know it is serious. A short excerpt:

Solar panels are an increasingly important source of renewable power that will play an essential role in fighting climate change. They are also complex pieces of technology that become big, bulky sheets of electronic waste at the end of their lives — and right now, most of the world doesn’t have a plan for dealing with that.

But we’ll need to develop one soon, because the solar e-waste glut is coming. By 2050, the International Renewable Energy Agency projects that up to 78 million metric tons of solar panels will have reached the end of their life, and that the world will be generating about 6 million metric tons of new solar e-waste annually. While the latter number is a small fraction of the total e-waste humanity produces each year, standard electronics recycling methods don’t cut it for solar panels. 

While solar is a good choice for some applications, the best choices for clear power are hydroelectric and next-generation nuclear. In Africa, parts of China, and other less-developed parts of the world, a modern coal plant will produce far less CO2 than cooking with dung. Looking just a little farther out, we may be on the threshold of cheap hydrogen power. Unfortunately, it seems that far too many want a political issue than to actually solve the problem.