You may have heard me say this a time or two. Neither Wind nor Solar is clean or green. They can’t even scratch the surface of our power needs now. Forget adding more demand from EVs or whatever. It’s all a lie and a very dirty lie.
President Joe Biden declared a 24-month tariff exemption for solar panel products from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, and announced the use of the Defense Production Act to promote domestic production. The news was first reported by Reuters. The move comes as a Commerce Department investigation into the solar industry in Southeast Asia has added more hurdles to importing equipment.
There is a credible link between the components these companies will use and China/human rights violations, including slave labor (are we paying them reparations too?). And yes, it matters, but I don’t want to get too far from my point. Biden thinks solar will help ease the pain caused by his war on oil and gas. To get there, he’s opening up the Asian solar market. This will divert billion to China, which dominates the sector.
And it will cause millions of tons of CO2 to be released into the atmosphere (if that is supposed to matter).
Manufacturers of solar panels need lots of high-quality coal and a big industrial base to process the silicon, and Xinjiang (China) has both. Vast amounts of coal are consumed by the chemical process which reduces quartz to silicon, and further coal is required to fuel the furnaces which heat the raw materials to the temperature required to initiate and sustain the chemical reaction which refines the silicon.
Most of the other materials needed, including rare earth metals, are increasingly expensive and come from enemies or frenemies. But without silicon, you can’t build the things, and that manufacturing process has a massive carbon footprint (again, if that’s supposed to matter).
Related: Energy Fail – California Solar Leads to Huge Spike in “Fossil Fuel Emissions”
Scaling up solar will enrich our enemies, divert billions (trillions?) away from America, and make us more dependent on them for a fundamental necessity of modern life (electricity). And I’ve not even broached the impact on economics or national defense. You can’t defend America on “green” power.
Oh yeah, and it’s going to puke an insane amount of “emissions” into the biosphere from places with few, if any, controls. These bits will then need to be shipped to wherever they are processed, to where they are assembled, and then to their destination in diesel-powered freighters every leg of the way.
Trucked to solar facilities, trucked to installation locations, and then installed. And we will need to deal with the end-of-life solar waste nightmare – a toxic and carbon-intensive problem.
All in the name of “green” energy that can’t even meet a fraction of our needs.
Related: Biden’s Green Future Makes Solar Panels More Dangerous to You and the Environment
I guess that explains why Biden and Democrats love it so mu h. It does nothing to lower emissions (if that’s supposed to matter), hurts us, and enriches our enemies for less than nothing. None of which will impact their lifestyles, unless by ‘impact’ you mean improve them. And that sounds a lot like the accusations the left directs at supporters of fossil fuels. And maybe that still holds. But at least with big oil, we got American jobs, prosperity, national security, and affordable energy.
Wind and Solar make us more vulnerable for less than nothing.
HT | WUWT
