Downside of Clean Renewable Energy

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Clean Renewable Energy (solar cell and wind technology, electric vehicles and EV batteries) rely heavily on various metals. Extraction of these metals come at a high environmental cost.

Most of the world’s rare earth ores are extracted near Baotou, Inner Mongolia by pumping acid into the ground, then processed using more acids and chemicals. Producing one ton of rare earth metals releases up to 420,000 cubic feet of toxic gases, 2,600 cubic feet of acidic wastewater, and a ton of radioactive waste. The resulting black sludge is piped into a foul, lifeless lake. Numerous local people suffer from severe skin and respiratory diseases, children are born with soft bones, and cancer rates have soared.

Lithium comes largely from Tibet and arid highlands of the Argentina-Bolivia-Chile “lithium triangle.” Dead, toxic fish join carcasses of cows and yaks floating down Tibet’s Liqi River, which has been poisoned by the Ganzizhou Rongda mine. Native people in the ABC triangle say lithium operations contaminate streams needed for humans, livestock and irrigation, and leave mountains of discarded salt.

The world’s top producer of cobalt is the Democratic Republic of Congo, where some 40,000 children as young as four toil with their parents for less than $2 a day up to 12 hours a day. Many die in cave-ins, or more slowly from constant exposure to toxic, radioactive mud, dust, water and air that puts dangerous levels of cobalt, lead, uranium and other heavy metals into their bodies. The cobalt ore is sent to China for processing by the Chinese-owned Congo Dongfang International Mining Company.

All the more reason we should put more into development of hydrocell tech and saline-electrolyte power cells.

Hydrogen fuel cell technology uses rare earth metals.

For example:
Now, researchers from Spain and Norway have unveiled a new method to convert methane to hydrogen with almost no loss of energy, perhaps making the vehicles (slightly) more feasible.

The system builds on a hydrogen production process called steam reforming. During the process used today, 700 to 1,000 degree Celcius steam reacts with methane (natural gas) under high pressure in the presence of a catalyst like nickel or platinum, producing H2, water and CO2. The problem is that only 65-75 percent of the methane's energy is captured as hydrogen and the process still releases significant amounts of CO2 -- about half of what your car produces when burning gasoline.

By adding a ceramic membrane to that process, the researchers were able to generate hydrogen from natural gas in one step "with near zero energy loss," they said. The membrane is made from barium, zirconia, yttrium and other rare elements, and the trick is to apply an electrical voltage difference across its surface. When you do that, the steam and methane mix will transit to the other side as protons, creating ionized hydrogen.

Source: Rare metals could make hydrogen-powered cars more efficient

Wind turbines increasingly use silicone instead of rare Earths.

I think the rare earths in turbines are neodymium or samarium, and those obviously can't be replaced with silicone. But I've also heard that a lot of turbines use induction generators and therefore don't need either element.

Several years ago I calculated the amount of aluminum needed for two of the main lines that transmit wind power from South Dakota to the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area, and it worked out to roughly 10,000 short tons (9 million kilograms). This was for 330 miles (530 kilometers) of 345 kilovolt transmission line carrying 2 gigawatts.

That's a lot of material, but it's workable. It's probably equal to about a third of the recycled aluminum Minnesota consumes in a year, although I'm basing that on global figures and guesses about how state consumption compares to the global average.

What does bother me is that the companies selling these systems aren't required to provide this data before receiving environmental subsidies. Tesla for example has never published a life-cycle CO2 footprint estimate for any of their cars despite benefiting from $300 million in federal tax credits and $2 billion in state and local subsidies. They also didn't cooperate on any of the third-party estimates.

It’s obviously not a like-for-like swap, but entirely different generation technologies. Modern electronics are largely silicone based. There are also more turbines using conventional electromagnets (which use metals we are more familiar with) than using rare Earth supermagnets.

https://thebulletin.org/2017/05/clean-e ... -to-worry/

Yes, those are called induction generators. The magnet cores are iron, but a special type with high silicon content and very low carbon, aluminum and sulfur. It's pretty expensive to make, but I'm not sure how much that translates into higher CO2 footprint.

All the more reason we should put more into development of *hydrocell tech and saline-electrolyte power cells*. Not "hydrogen fuel cells" - hydrocell saline electrolyte. Different tech entirely. Doesn't use rare earth metals. Uses copper and nickel. Electrolyte is non toxic and non corrosive.

How do toxic sludges and pumping chemicals into the ground compare with oil spills and pumping chemicals into the ground for fracking?

But the first gives you the resources to build renewable energy power generation, the latter gives you fossil fuels.
In other words: it's the lesser of two evils, we just got so accustomed to the occasional environmental catastrophe of oil production that we don't register it anymore.

And bloody hell, summers have gotten hot.

I think you're mixing up silicon and silicone here.

That sounds more like a problem with environmental, safety, and labor regulations. But I totally agree with you that we need better regulation on this industry. But to be clear, this is not just a problem with alternative energy. The environmental impact of the fossil fuel industry needs better regulation as well.