Manhattan Institute – Jul. 9, 2020
Climate change is a very real threat, and society must invest in mitigating the effects of carbon emissions – but “Green” Energy poses larger and more significant threats… to the environment.
In the fact-based article Mines, Minerals and Green Energy; A Reality Check, Dr. Mark Mills explores the potential environmental damage the Green Energy “Revolution” poses to our environment. As policymakers shift their focus from pandemic challenges to economic recovery, infrastructure plans are being actively discussed, including those relating to energy. Green energy advocates are doubling down on pressure to continue, or even increase, the use of wind, solar power, and electric cars. Left out of the discussion is any serious consideration of the broad environmental and supply-chain implications of renewable energy.
This paper turns to a different reality: all energy-producing machinery must be fabricated from materials extracted from the earth. No energy system, in short, is actually “renewable,” since all machines require the continual mining and processing of millions of tons of primary materials and the disposal of hardware that inevitably wears out. Compared with hydrocarbons, green machines entail, on average, a 10-fold increase in the quantities of materials extracted and processed to produce the same amount of energy.
For more information refer to the article on Manhattan Institute – 09-Jul-20 or download the pdf of the article.