By Guy Ciarrocchi, Broad & Liberty, April 10, 2023
An honest discussion on “green energy” should focus on its impact on the environment and the economy, national security, and morality.
All forms of energy cause environmental impacts, from its extraction, creation, use, and disposal. We deserve honest information to balance pros and cons and make judgments because it’s not simply “good vs. bad.” Government imposed policies slowing oil and gas production and forcing “green energy” have economic, national security, moral and environmental costs. Individuals and businesses should be free to make choices once armed with the facts.
First, there is no such thing as pure “green energy.” Politicians and activists tout “green energy” as if there’s no waste or negative impacts to the environment from electric cars, windmills or solar panels. Those politicians are either clueless, misleading us, or blindly advocating a religion-like ideology.
Constructing a solar panel or windmill requires natural gas components, such as plastics. Factories making “green energy” products require electricity — usually coming from gas or coal-fired plants. Delivering the parts and completed solar panels and windmills require gasoline, diesel fuel, and perhaps jet fuel.
There’s also no accounting for when it’s cloudy. When there’s little to no breeze, a windmill’s diesel-fueled engines kick-in. Storing their energy requires batteries that are inherently inefficient and made from minerals needing to be mined. (We’ll come back to that.) When those enormous, sky-scraper sized windmills wear out or tip over and break, they are “buried” in windmill graveyards. And, we would need to set aside land the size of cities to bring wind and solar to even 25 percent of American energy production — that’s before we talk about our nation’s inadequate electric-grids to transmit electricity.
Does that sound “green?”
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Wind Concerns is a collaboration of citizens of the Lakeland Alberta region against proposed wind turbine projects.