While it was created to have more transparency in the production industry, it seems to have done the opposite, as it allows companies to self report the amounts of toxins and waste that are expelled. The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition has been tracking the environmental impacts of the industry since 1982. Today, nearly half of the world photovoltaics are made in China, which has looser laws on the protection of its workers and the environment. The inclusion of extremely toxic chemicals is found in almost every step of the production process of solar panels. Tetrachloride is a toxic chemical that when introduced to water can create hydrochloric acid, which is extremely dangerous to both humans and the environment. This generates up to 4 tons of tetrachloride waste for every 1 ton of polysilicon produced. Most solar panels made today are made from quartz, which has to be mined before going through an extensive heating process fueled by coal, then turned into a purer form called polysilicon. Solar panels also have a significant carbon footprint. Moreover, all of the electricity that wind turbines produce is intermittent, while its production, installation and maintenance all rely heavily on fossil fuels. As of numbers from 2016, if the world were to have 25% of its power come completely from wind turbines, we would need 450 million metric tons of steel and the fossil fuel equivalent of 600 million metric tons of coal. Each wind turbine requires about 230 tons of steel, and steel-making requires a very large amount of coal. It does not have the strength to ever completely replace fossil fuels, but nuclear energy does.Īs of 2019, 65% of Germany’s energy was powered by renewable energy sources, and 48% of that came from wind turbines. Green energy is not the solution to climate change, and it never was. Solar panels and windmills dominate the clean energy scene and are actually doing much more harm to the environment than we might think. Our more popular solutions may not be as green, sustainable or renewable as we might have hoped, either. The flaw here is evident - beyond cutting down one of our best defenses against a warming planet, it still releases an astronomical amount of carbon dioxide into the air. One example is biofuel - the mass deforestation and burning of trees for electricity. Many alternatives to fossil fuels have been tested and researched. Pittsburgh has the eighth worst air particle pollution in the nation with asthma rates nearly three times the national average, and Allegheny county is in the top 2% of all U.S. The lungs of our nation’s industrial cities are still choking on carbon dioxide. If you lived in Pittsburgh even 20 or 30 years ago, you’ll remember that the buildings were black with soot - steel mills and coke works burned coal and belched the smoke into the air.
Solar and wind energy seem to be pioneering the green energy effort, but how green are they really? Green energy means to transition away from fossil fuels and rely on cleaner ways of generating energy without releasing greenhouse gases into the air. One solution is dominating the conversation of fixing our planet’s climate - green energy. Climate change is at the center of everyone’s attention nowadays, with California’s sky burning orange.
0 kommentar(er)
