Solar/wind + battery storage is cheaper than natural gas and a hell of a lot cleaner. It makes no sense to go for a more expensive, dirtier form of energy.
How exactly is the production of batteries cleaner and cheaper than the production of natural gas?
In the US, the major source of natgas is now fracking.
And uh, fracking is about the most gross extraction method for anything you can dig out of the ground.
A potential solution here is to dramatically limit or eliminate protections for fracking, but still allow it. If they can pay for any damage they cause, they should be allowed to do it. The problem is that we’re subsidizing these efforts in a number of ways, and giving these orgs way too many protections. We should remove those, but IMO not ban fracking itself, since it can be a very useful way to produce energy in our transition away from coal.
That said, we should absolutely be investing in clean energy. I want to see a renewed push for nuclear power, expansion and optimization of hydro, etc. But we’re not going to switch to green energy overnight (and the US is improving on emissions faster than many other countries), and fracking works well in the short-term as we move away from coal. As renewables get built out, we can reduce how much fracking we do.
pay for any damage they cause
Things have gotten somewhat better after some high-profile messes, but we’re still basically just shoving tens of thousands of gallons of toxic wastewater into holes and hoping it stays there and doesn’t go anywhere else. Which, of course, uh, water likes doing, so it’s very much not a good permanent solution to anything.
I’m pro-nuclear myself, given that of a long list of mediocre (wind, solar, hydro) to bad choices (coal, biomass) it’s probably the best and most reliable option that relies the least on highly contentious resources (lithium) and the waste problem isn’t entirely insurmountable given the progress on fuel recycling that’s been being made in recent years.
And I’m sure I’m going to get shit for calling wind, solar and hydro mediocre, and that’s probably reasonable. But the problem is solar and wind aren’t good base loads, and building a large hydroelectric plant is incredibly impactful for wherever you’re building it, since it kinda requires you to make a giant-ass lake on an area that’s probably not already one.
Cool story. How do we pull rare earth minerals, needed for batteries, from the ground?
Typically not by injecting toxic carcinogens into the ground to do so, like we do with fracking.
Also I’ve not heard of any strip mining activities that turn a town’s only water supply into something that’s flammable, but I perhaps missed that?
Or the ongoing incidents of child and adult cancer caused by this itty bitty little toxic waste issue.
You make the batteries once, and the pollution due to production is spread over the 10-15 year lifetime of the battery. During that time gigawatt hours of clean power sloshes in and out of them. This in contrast to having to produce enough gas to make all of those gigawatt hours once, then throw the gas away as co2 and get more, along with the attendant pollution.
Batteries have infinite energy now? No storage issues due to electrical surges, heat, cold, or anything else that makes batteries sub optimal? While seemingly by magic, mining rare earth minerals spreads its environmental impact over 10-15 years of the lifetime of the battery with 0 negative impact to the area the mine is located?
Oh wait… None of that is true so I guess you can try again.
I have no idea what you are trying to say. Batteries have an environmental impact, but so does fracking for natural gas. You have the impact up front making a battery, but charging it with renewables does not have continued environmental impact. But if you use gas, you’re going to have to use an awful lot of it over that time period to offset the clean power you’re able to use when you have a battery. And that gas has a very high environmental impact, continually, over that entire time period.
I didn’t say batteries have NO impact, but they have less impact than continually mining and burning fossil fuels.
Sodium batteries require very little rare earths in comparison to lithium batteries.
mining rare earth minerals
Are you under the impression that we use NMC batteries for grid energy storage?? LOL
Mostly because natural gas is a one and done thing when it is used. Batteries can be recycled. Production of natural gas is largely done through racking which destroys the groundwater. While batteries often require mining (excluding mechanical ones), they often can be broken down and reused in new batteries. And of course there is the greenhouse gas emissions from methane that are horrible. Methane is extremely leaky. Methane usage emits about as much greenhouse gas emissions as coal does.
I enjoy how much effort it takes to ignore how batteries are produced in order to argue for them in a comparison with natural gas.
I enjoy that you are making a strawman. Nobody ever said batteries have no negatives. You asked how they were cleaner than natural gas. I answered. Sorry that the answer hurt your feelings.
Do you want the math or would you prefer less reading and more pictures?
Nothing like an ignoramus to try and make someone else feel stupid for asking a question.
Since you are all knowing, explain to me exactly how deep earth mining is less costly and better for the environment than deep earth drilling.
Or did you think we just magically pull batteries from thin air at 0 cost?
Since you are all knowing, explain to me exactly how deep earth mining is less costly and better for the environment than deep earth drilling.
Easy, just compare the amount of pollution required to make a battery and a solar panel with the amount of pollution required to extract and burn fossil fuels for the equivalent power output over the duration of the renewable’s working lifetime.
Oh, and don’t forget. Fossil fuels are useless without an engine to burn them, so you need to account for those infrastructure costs as well.
