Totally eWasted!

 

There are always consequences for just about anything we do. We desperately need water in so many regions, as climate change dries up land creating new pockets of probably near-permanent aridity. But moving water from where it is to where it is needed is not only hideously expensive, it sucks up massive amount of electrical pumping power. Even as some of that power is generated when the water flows downhill. Desalinization is also a massive consumer of electricity, and the extracted salt becomes a toxic effluent that can be piled up endlessly or pumped back into the sea… except that oceanic salt build-up near the desalinization plant can create a dead zone, killing off all manner of sea life. That salt has to be slowly dispersed over miles of seawater… it is a problem.

Those giant wind-power turbines are expensive and often need repair, but those spinning propellers also take their toll on passive migrating birds. There’s always a price. Tapping into geothermal reserves to generate steam power, like fracking, can destabilize the adjoining lands, triggering earthquakes in areas that lack building codes that can deal with those shakers. More than one major geothermal power-generating facility had to be shut down accordingly. Hopefully temporarily.

For people enamored of their truly efficient electric cars, those necessary batteries carry their own massive issues. First, manufacturing batteries consumes a lot of electricity, and those large-capacity lithium ion batteries can generate up 74% more C0₂ than the manufacture of conventional cars. Industry Week (10/16/18) explains: “By 2021, capacity will exist to build batteries for more than 10 million cars running on 60 kilowatt-hour packs, according to data of Bloomberg NEF. Most supply will come from places like China, Thailand, Germany and Poland that rely on non-renewable sources like coal for electricity.

“Just to build each car battery—weighing upwards of 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) in size for sport-utility vehicles—would emit up to 74% more C02 than producing an efficient conventional car if it's made in a factory powered by fossil fuels in a place like Germany, according to [Munich-based automotive consultancy Berylls Strategy Advisors’] findings…

“[E]lectric cars aren't as clean as they could be. Just switching to renewable energy for manufacturing would slash emissions by 65%, according to Transport & Environment. In Norway, where hydro-electric energy powers practically the entire grid, the Berylls study showed electric cars generate nearly 60% less CO2 over their lifetime, compared with even the most efficient fuel-powered vehicles.” That’s the manufacturing process, which obviously has some solutions.

But “there is an unanswered environmental question at the heart of the electric car movement: what on earth to do with their half-tonne lithium-ion batteries when they wear out?... However, in the EU as few as 5% (pdf) of lithium-ion batteries are recycled. This has an environmental cost. Not only do the batteries carry a risk of giving off toxic gases if damaged, but core ingredients such as lithium and cobalt are finite and extraction can lead to water pollution and depletion among other environmental consequences.” Guardian UK (8/10/17) That issue can be handled by making the manufacturers responsible for more recycling.

We also use amazing amounts of rare earth metals in our manufacture of smart phones, flat panel TVs, computers (of all kinds), etc., and that reality is fraught with recycling issues as well as political-economic realities. China, for example, is one of the world’s leading sources of such metals. While the United States does have some resources, we are currently dependent on China for our supply. There is toxicity at varying levels with both the metals themselves and the chemicals required to process them. Recycling becomes increasingly critical.

Even our expanding use of solar panels has some serious issues that will only grow in the coming decades. “The global surge in solar power is helping quickly lower the cost of solar panels and shrink energy’s carbon footprint, with around 70,000 solar panels being installed every hour by 2018, and an estimated 1.47 million solar panels in place by that year in the U.S. alone. But it also means that we’ll face an enormous pile of e-waste when those panels eventually wear out.

“By the early 2030s, as one large wave of solar panels is reaching the end of life, the International Renewable Energy Agency projects that there could be as much as 8 million metric tons of total solar panel waste. By 2050, that could jump to as much as 78 million metric tons of cumulative waste. ‘We’re looking at an emerging waste stream which has the potential to go to pretty large volumes over the next decade,’ says Andreas Wade, who leads global sustainability for First Solar, a solar panel manufacturer that is taking on the problem with a circular approach.

“At a recycling plant in Ohio, next to the company’s manufacturing facility, First Solar uses custom technology to disassemble and recycle old panels, recovering 90% of the materials inside. It runs similar recycling systems in Germany and Malaysia. Right now, the holistic lifecycle approach isn’t common among other solar producers. But Wade says that now is the time to think about the problem. ‘Our aim for solar is to help our customers decouple their economic growth from negative environmental impacts,’ he says. ‘So it is kind of a mandatory point for us to address the renewable-energy-circular-economy nexus today and not 20 years from now.’” FastCompany.com, October 9^th.

For those who see all these problems, there is an equal body of policy-makers who see the solutions – over and above inventing, designing and building alternative energy systems – as creating massive numbers of new, high-paying jobs for the obvious eWaste solutions: recycling, waste management and repowering alternative energy manufacturing with… er… alternative energy. The opportunity looms.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and for those who cannot see beyond the end of these noses, who somehow believe that they can reverse the plunge in global demand for fossil fuels (particularly the dirtiest of them all: coal), they will continue to lead us into the worst environmental period since man first walked the planet… and miss those massive job-creating opportunities begging for workers.