I doubt that water, wind, solar, and nuclear power combined produce less than 1% of our current energy as you state. Please bring some factual information to our Community.
On energy, i have several friends using cost effective green energy for their homes. One lives in a hay-bale house powered and heated by both wind and solar. He’s on the grid but hasn’t had to pay an electricity bill since 2005 due to the credits he generates.
Another heats his home and water with a geothermal source. Yes the initial capital costs were high, but when those are amortized over a reasonable period the system is quite cost effective and leaves no carbon footprint in use, something that can’t be said for natural gas or coal, clean or not.
I don’t need lessons in bringing factual information to a community.
The EIA (U.S. Energy Info Admin) AEO 2019 report shows that in year 2018 wind and solar energy resources provide about 3% of U.S. total energy consumption (less outside USA) while fossil fuel energy resources provide about 81% of total energy use.PTC (Production Tax Credit) subsidies for renewable solar and wind projects in the U.S. have now reached about $50 billion dollars in cumulative payments through year 2018 with these resources providing about 3% of our countries total energy consumption in that year…Additionally these annual wind and solar subsidiies now total more than $8 billion dollars per year.
You obviously don’t appreciate the irony in your statement about your friends paying nothing. They are able to obtain credits PRECISELY because their so-called green energy is being subsidized. If wind and solar were self-evidently advantageous and cost-effective they would not need the huge subsidies they receive. Both wind and solar require back-up systems for when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. That back-up system is the grid-- you know, the system that already supplies all the energy we need. Solar and wind have niche places in society’s total energy requirement but as major sources they are hugely wasteful. They destroy habitats, strip land of more useful and productive purposes, kill millions of birds every year and produce huge recycling issues when their useful lives end.
Stephan, you continue to be economical with your now adjusted factual information. I checked, the EIA source cited currently indicates that solar and wind provides 10% of production while fossil fuel sources provide 63%. Nuclear, hydro, and small scale solar and PV power generation shouldn’t be ignored as they are a significant part of the total.
You need some balance in your description of the unfavourable aspects of wind and solar power while ignoring the land destruction and water pollution caused to states like West Virginia by coal mining. You also neglect to describe the damage caused by fracking and the loss of farmland and pollution from oil and gas production. Maybe you don’t remember the Exxon Valdez and the oil spill that killed billions of salmon, sea birds, otters, orcas, and seals? Maybe you’ve never experienced the stinking mountains of sulphur next to natural gas processing plants.
We do not currently enjoy socialized electrical power. In fact, it’s the reverse with the rates applied to home use double and triple industrial and public facility rates. Where i live there are only small equipment cost subsidies available for new domestic power generation. They are usually offset by the additional cost of equipment to facilitate being attached to the grid if desired. Some folks do it, some don’t.
You likely know that electric power meters can function in both directions, electricity-in and electricity-out, that would be out to the grid resulting in credits. Those credits are applied to the cost of using electricity when on site power generation isn’t functioning. Once an on-site battery back-up system is fully charged all surplus energy generated flows to the grid for others to use. That’s the real irony of free energy, users give more than they get. It all operates with a simple program running on a pair of inexpensive shadowing laptops that can control many other household actives like SV cooking, timing the washer to run when energy production is high, etc.
Canada has sent ships full of plastic to “third world” countries and they are now sending them back. So we the so-called “first world” are also contributing to the problem.
After having visited Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and the new airport in Bangkok I’m wondering who is actually third world.
Canada ships its plastic overseas? Why? Here in the US, at least in my hometown, we recycle. Plastics, glass, cardboard, metals…all are collected bi-weekly. In fact, I was commenting to my wife last week about how much things have changed since we were kids, when everything used to be tossed in the garbage and collected weekly. Nowadays our actual garbage container is half the size of those with which I grew up, is collected every other week, and we don’t even fill it fully.
Why does Canada expend the effort and energy to ship plastic overseas rather than recycle it?
You’d actually be surprised how much material that is submitted for recycling actually gets recycled, in the US, UK, Australia, etc. There’s been an awful lot of it that has, in the past, been shipped to China and other countries to be reprocessed. The western end of the first world leans pretty heavily on out of sight out of mind.
Why doesn’t the west process their own recycling? The typical reason that they don’t do most things. No easy profit in it. Plenty of profitable objects that can be made with recycled material, but there needs to be the push to do it.
Actually I can understand why they might “sell” the plastic to be recycled in another country, so I think you have it right @Ember. There’s a low margin of profitability in the actual plastics recycle process, but where labor costs are low the profit margin may make it worthwhile. If this is what is happening to those shiploads of plastic sent out of Canada then it’s not contributing to any problem…it’s just part of a solution. The plastic is recycled.
The use of plastic disposable tableware leads to the filling of landfills. They can also be found scattered around the streets, so they pollute the environment. Air pollution. From time to time, some people resort to burning plastic waste, which leads to the release of large amounts of toxins into the atmosphere. … Waterways are also covered with plastic. Harmful to human health. The risk of developing kidney stones, breast and liver cancer, decreased sperm count and hormonal imbalance in humans are associated with the daily use of plastic cutlery. Therefore, I use gloves from Beware of Food Contamination: Your Guide to Nitrile Gloves & Food Safety - Medrux since they are very durable and do not need to be changed so often.