>>9414
>source: my ass
Sorry, I was too lazy to sift through my old shitposts on the subject and fix broken links.
>>9417
>solar
>wind
>break even
https://www.ecowatch.com/solar/solar-panel-payback
<For most homeowners in the U.S., it takes roughly eight years to break even on a solar panel investment.
<Most residential solar systems last between 25 and 30 years. If your payback period is eight years, you’ll be “making money” on the system for 17 to 23 years.
https://www.windpowerengineering.com/wind-turbine-carbon-payback-times-shorter-than-expected-finds-new-study/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140616093317.htm
<the payback for the associated energy use is within about 6 months, the team found. It is likely that even in a worst case scenario, lifetime energy requirements for each turbine will be subsumed by the first year of active use. Thus, for the 19 subsequent years, each turbine will, in effect, power over 500 households without consuming electricity generated using conventional energy sources.
>mine the materials
A non-recurring expense, and can be recycled, unlike fuels that are destroyed when consumed and so require a continuous supply. Regarding solar, I hasten to note that while PV solar is recyclable, I myself personally favor CSP over PV on the basis of its simpler technology and materials.
>lubricate the moving parts
As I noted a bit upthread, bio feedstocks can be used to make any hydrocarbon.
>backups for when there is no wind or sun
>This "green energy" stuff is just a money laundering scheme
The following report shows (in the 1st graph on page 5) both solar & wind stomping coal & nuclear for half the price, plus tying with gas. Note those prices INCLUDE grid storage (batteries, hydrogen, CAES, etc.) to fully offset intermittency.
https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost-of-energyplus/
For these reasons, every penny spent on new fossil/nuclear generation instead of sustainables is a pointless waste constraining future energy supply.
>The reason nuclear is so expensive
Is because it's an inherently flawed technology that survives entirely on taxpayer bailouts UNPRECEDENTED by any other energy subsidy:
https://archive.thinkprogress.org/how-much-of-a-subsidy-is-the-price-anderson-nuclear-industry-indemnity-act-391693197ab/
Along with nuclear accounting for nearly all the money spent on ratepayer bailouts of failed investments from private electric utilities:
https://theintercept.com/2020/08/07/nuclear-power-energy-utility-bribery-scandal/
And everywhere in the world, even in today's most recklessly pro-nuke regulatory environments like chingchong, nuclear boondoggles have always been getting MORE not less expensive and breaking deadlines of ever longer schedules:
https://www.colorado.edu/cas/2022/04/12/even-china-cannot-rescue-nuclear-power-its-woes
>There is nothing wrong with the technology itself
Setting aside its uniquely apocalyptic pollution, safety, proliferation, and security issues compared to literally every other type of generator that I'm sure you already appreciate there's the fact it relies on a finite and very small supply of fuel:
https://www.energywatchgroup.org/blog-post/
The typical nuke cope (aside from "muh thorium", usably pure deposits of which are scarcer than uranium) is then "muh breeders", but of course breeders (aside from remaining experimental outside military applications, and constant breakdowns compared to conventional reactors, thus uncompetitive for energy in spite of a half century of research) all rely on transmuting any fuel loaded into weapons-grade plutonium and keeping it that way as long as possible for maximum breeding ratio, for which civilian breeders have justly been banned by international treaty for decades.
>when the corporate media tells you
Ah yes, telling. As opposed to, y'know, DOING. Like Republican voters complaining about immigration while Republican politicians keep issuing visas, or Democrat voters complaining about the prison-industrial-complex while Democrat politicians build endless prisons.
>and yet you still think you're fighting the oil companies somehow
Environmentalism boils down to one of two mutually exclusive stances on sustainable permaculure: Green growth (ecopositivism), versus green degrowth (ecoausterity).
I'm of course for green growth, eliminating waste by focusing on infrastructure details imperceptible to individual quality of life, while maintaining or increasing QoL for individuals whose private affairs are unmolested. Also as I noted upthread, even ignoring environmentalist and cost benefits, sustainable energy liberates us from perpetual external dependencies.
Oil companies and other fossil fuels as well as nuclear serve the purpose of enforcing perpetual dependence on centralized resources, while braindead green degrowth rhetoric serves the purpose of bullying individuals about their environmentally inconsequential private habits without actually touching infrastructure that would make real environmental impact. In this way the two evils dovetail.
>>9418
>In reality you're just condensing all the complexity and expense into a single [...] component
IMHO that's the ideal way. Think of the difference between, for instance, a typical consumer PC component like a GPU or PSU (bunch of fiddly cables edge connectors and screws that take minutes, have to open the case, static/dust sensitive, coldswap), versus an enterprise server component (insert/eject externally in seconds, sealed component casing, hotswap). In spite of that difference for routine tasks, individual server components are still designed to be cracked open and repaired when necessary, so it's the best of both worlds.
>unsustainable
>There's nowhere near enough lithium to supply all current car owners with EV battery packs
False, same goes for similar canards like peak neodymium for motors/windmills or peak platinum for hydrogen:
https://thebulletin.org/2017/05/clean-energy-and-rare-earths-why-not-to-worry/
I'll also reiterate what I said upthread about flow batteries/unitized fuel cells, which greatly reduce the amount of lithium (or other electrolyte/catalyst) needed to achieve arbitrary energy capacity (i.e.: kWh) at a given maximum power (i.e.: kW).
>And you need a continuous supply of them
As I noted above, they are durable goods that can be recycled, unlike consumables such as fuel.