And this guy is considered a lefty and not pro-Trump, but he's 100% on-point. The whole video and the details are excellent, although if it wasn't for China, hydro would be even safer than anything short of nuclear. Been watching his videos for years, especially flights and other 'downtime.'
I made it a whopping 8 minutes into this brainiac's video until I finally had to admit to myself that I was wasting my very valuable time. Here's the first 8 minutes in a nutshell (aside from the fact that all he's doing is regurgitating the anti-renewable rhetoric and sensationalizing/spinning the narrative). Unlike the assclown in the video, I'll actually provide citations.
* Wind turbines kill "hundreds of thousands" of birds and bats each year. - An operational windfarm produces no harmful pollutants like methane, mercury, SO
2 or particulates (all of which are found in traditional forms of energy production and kill many types of wildlife, not just birds and bats). I always love the bird/bat death claim from these kinds of folks. Wind turbines cause fewer than 0.01% of all human-related bird deaths in the U.S. Habitat conversion, vehicle strikes and collisions with buildings and comm. towers are all far more deadly to birds/bats than wind turbines. The number one killer of birds/bats? Cats, and it's not even close. He raves on and shows pictures of bald eagles and other endangered species of birds. A handful of bald eagles have ever been killed in the over 40-year history of the U.S. wind industry. Further, golden eagle deaths are primarily concentrated in the Altamont Pass area of California. The Altamont Pass was largely developed in the 80s before the relationship between eagles and turbines was understood. There is a VERY strict permitting process in areas where endangered and even migratory birds may be impacted. These days, most wind farm developers won't even touch these areas because it's such a crap shoot with permitting, etc.
https://www.awea.org/policy-and-issues/project-development/wildlife
* Life span of solar panels is 20-25 years. - First of all, this is a very disingenuous statement. The average "useful life" of a quality solar panel is now 25-30 years. And, that doesn't meant that they stop producing power after 30 years - just that their production has declined by what would be considered a "significant amount". In fact, most "Tier 1" solar panel manufacturers provide a 20-year power production guaranty. I wish I could get a 20-year manufacturer's warranty with my car!
https://news.energysage.com/how-long-do-solar-panels-last/
* Solar panels are toxic and there's no way to dispose of them. - This is fvcking laughable. First of all, the chemicals he's talking about are found in thin film (Cd-Te) solar panels. Cd-Te solar panels make up a whopping 5% of the installed market share of solar panels. The other 95% is crystalline (silicone) which doesn't contain the heavy metals, etc. that this joker is talking about (
https://www.solaris-shop.com/blog/crystalline-vs-thin-film-solar-panels/). On the topic of disposal, there are already solar recycling and solar panel repowering programs that exist.
https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/2017/10/the-opportunities-of-solar-panel-recycling
* Wind and solar only produce power when the wind blows and the sun shines. - Duh? Solar produces during the times when the electrical load is the greatest. Wind produces significant energy at night. Battery storage is the key to evening out production and consumption and the growth of battery energy storage systems (BESS) over the last couple of years has been nothing short of astronomical.
* Capacity factor of 30% for wind. - Again, another disingenuous (at best) or blatant lie. The cap. factor for wind resides in the range of 38%-55% (depending on a variety of factors, including onshore vs. offshore, etc.).
https://www.lazard.com/media/450784/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-120-vfinal.pdf
* Land usage - There's no getting around the usage of land for wind, outside of offshore wind farms anyway. However, despite a majority of solar installations being greenfield, there's an enormous number of solar rooftop installations (residential and commercial alike, through both distributed generation as well as net metering) and landfill/brownfield/Superfund installations.
The answer from anyone with half a brain - even those at the top of the largest trade associations for wind and solar - is that a diverse energy
mix is needed. Perhaps when more BESS gets installed then it
might be the time to begin discussing 100% wind, solar, etc., but we're not there yet. In the meantime, there are geographies where it's vital to have 100% renewables because of infrastructure, fuel and/or delivery costs.