lol aren't solar panels like 99% silicon, which is literally the most abundant crust mineral? Its rocks, its literally rocks. Rocks are what silicon makes up. Will we ever run out of roc
ks?
And so-called "Rare Earth Elements" aren't exactly rare... They just aren't specially concentrated anywhere. You could probably take a Hoe through your Backyard and wind up with a few mg of rare earth elements.
This is such a dumb take, all rocks are not the same. They are not equally effective for silicon extraction. The extraction process itself takes a lot of energy and solar panels are absolutely not 99% silicon, I don't know which crack case you got that idea from. Not to mention that there is an environmental cost of strip mining and scraping the earth for rare minerals.
The real killer though the batteries to store this energy (since we aren’t generating a steady stream of it) which require cobalt, lithium, and manganese. Wind turbines are even worse.
There's alternatives. For example, there's always thermal solar plants and even if the tech isn't all the way here yet, its probably because hardly any research has gone into it since its viewed as less efficient.
And lots of indigenous communities would jump for the chance to open a valuable rare mineral mine that would generate a ton of wealth for their community. A lot of posts here keep bringing up indigenous communities in what I feel is a really disingenuous and tokenizing way, as if they all hm together in common other that having been historically fucked with by colonizers at practically ever opportunity given. Going forward I'd hope that wouldn't continue, its not like a mine automatically has to be built by some outsider who plan on screwing over the community living for their the profit of their investors.
The real killer though the batteries to store this energy (since we aren’t generating a steady stream of it) which require cobalt, lithium, and manganese.
lol aren't solar panels like 99% silicon, which is literally the most abundant crust mineral? Its rocks, its literally rocks. Rocks are what silicon makes up. Will we ever run out of roc ks?
And so-called "Rare Earth Elements" aren't exactly rare... They just aren't specially concentrated anywhere. You could probably take a Hoe through your Backyard and wind up with a few mg of rare earth elements.
This is such a dumb take, all rocks are not the same. They are not equally effective for silicon extraction. The extraction process itself takes a lot of energy and solar panels are absolutely not 99% silicon, I don't know which crack case you got that idea from. Not to mention that there is an environmental cost of strip mining and scraping the earth for rare minerals.
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There's alternatives. For example, there's always thermal solar plants and even if the tech isn't all the way here yet, its probably because hardly any research has gone into it since its viewed as less efficient.
And lots of indigenous communities would jump for the chance to open a valuable rare mineral mine that would generate a ton of wealth for their community. A lot of posts here keep bringing up indigenous communities in what I feel is a really disingenuous and tokenizing way, as if they all hm together in common other that having been historically fucked with by colonizers at practically ever opportunity given. Going forward I'd hope that wouldn't continue, its not like a mine automatically has to be built by some outsider who plan on screwing over the community living for their the profit of their investors.
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You can replace batteries with hydrogen.
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You don't have that problem if you store the energy that's produced at peak moments in hydrogen.
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That just means you need to use more of them. At this point, I only care about reducing emissions (and not using to much other recources).
If we'd start using that technology on a large scale, it would evolve to higher efficiency very fast btw.
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