by _aavaa_ | 2025-08-17 06:50:22+00:00
> Here a summary of the regional effects in, er, all parts of the world

Have you read the summary? (Or even the IEA link I posted?) Because the shock in every single one of those countries was because of fossil fuel prices/shortages or climate change, not renewables.

> In fact, blades currently cannot be recycled, whereas the largest part by mass, the base, could be but routinely is not.

Hence the bad faith arguments and misinformation. Suddenly there’s all this care about lack of recyclability when it comes to clean energy, but not a care in the world about the pollution put into the air by fossil fuels. Or the coal ash from coal plants. Or electronic waste. Or municipal waste.

Of course there are no such concerns since this isn’t a serious argument. It’s put forth by people who already have their conclusions (renewables bad) and are looking for any reason to believe this.

Wind and solar produce a fraction of the amount of waste that fossil fuel sources produce per unit of energy created, and produce a minuscule amount of waste in absolute terms.

As for wind turbine blades, they are inert composites. Bury them and move on, they are about as best case scenario for garbage as we can get.

> which challenges the economic sanity of 100% intermittent renewable targets.

A) Don’t move the goal posts. We aren’t talking about 100% intermittent renewables.

And B) did you read the paper you posted or simple find the first one that confirms your biases? I’ll quote: “The LFSCOE are defined as the costs of providing electricity by a given generation technology, assuming that a particular market has to be supplied solely by this source of electricity plus storage”

Advocates of renewable energy are not advocating for using a single source, I.e. just solar and no wind nor hydro, or solely wind, or solely hydro.

This paper attempts to show that it is uneconomical to pursue a plan nobody is arguing for.

> Solar panel installations in China fell precipitously in June

… to 15GW. They installed only 16% of Germany’s total capacity in a single day.

Why did it fall so much? Per your own linked article: because a subsidy ran out last month which always causes demand to be pulled forward. It is the April and May number who are out of norm, per the graph you sent. The June numbers are in line with last year’s.

Nothing to see here indeed.

> Oh, and China invests massively in nuclear, currently approving about 10 plants a year, rate increasing, plants that they build in around 5 years.

And yet is behind on it’s nuclear target by 5 years [2] while it’s wind/solar/hydro are growing exponentially, far ahead of target and each one produces >2x more energy every year than nuclear [3].

Pointing to them and saying that nuclear is the way to go is not only not supported by the data, but is actively refuted.

> In Germany, intermittent renewables actually produced less power than three years ago, despite a massive increase in capacity.

A great way to misrepresent the fact. In Germany, all sources of electricity produced less energy than they did 3 years ago. Germany simply used less power. [1]

> overcapacity

So what? The sun shines and the wind blows for free, it costs nothing. If the plant is economical with this overcapacity, even before adding storage, I don’t see what the problem is.

> This overcapacity is almost entirely useless, as it has to be curtailed when sun and wind are cooperating

Another tired point. Install storage. Increase demand side flexibility. People already use time-of-day prices in many parts of the world. Incentivize them to use it when it’s more plentiful.

[0]: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/renewables-wast

[1]: https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/germany/

[2]: https://cleantechnica.com/2024/12/27/china-hits-ev-target-10...

[3]: https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/china#electricity-...