But coal plants are currently operating after being in service for 50 -60 years and with refurbishment, they could last much longer. I also think there is a much better use case for recycling nuclear fuel than wind turbine blades.
Nice article guys. I have a couple of quibbles. In the older solar farms in CA they are replacing panels at 10-12 years due to degradation, and friendly repowering subsidies. The farms sign contracts for a specific amount of power and as degradation sets in they fall short. There is no way out of the contract which can be 30 years, so they repower or breach and shut down. They can’t just add more as the increased short circuit current threatens the surrounding grid. The solar farm owners are all LLCs owned by LLCs owned by LLCs so they can just walk away, which they will do if the subsidies stop.
Even if you install 3500 MW of wind and solar it won’t replace the 1000MW coal plant without an unaffordable array of batteries. When you consider efficiencies (70% for grid scale batteries) you’d need at least 5000 MW. This of course doesn’t include long term storage, because it hasn’t been invented yet, so until it is you need to keep the coal plant on standby.
So-called renewables like weather-dependent wind and solar are not only short lifespan and non-recyclable, they are expensive to build and integrate, heavily resource-depleting, inefficient and unreliable. The tragedy is that there is no need whatsoever to attempt to reduce CO2 emissions because atmospheric CO2 is already “saturated”, which means even a doubling of its concentration from the present level will cause negligible global warming. The only reason they push ahead with these totally inappropriate technologies is because their ulterior purpose is to wreck the economy, deindustrialise, create deliberate food shortages and limit the population.
What is driving purchasing solar and wind generation? taxpayer-funded subsidy seekers are part of the problem. Here's one example of a well-heeled elite who admitted circa 2014 he is on the gravy train at taxpayer expense. (Buffett's father was a four-term U.S. Representative from Nebraska.) Multi-billionaire Warren Buffett explained the rationale for solar and wind generation in 2014:
"For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit."
"Big Wind's Bogus Subsidies - Giving tax credits to the wind energy industry is a waste of time and money."
By Nancy Pfotenhauer, Contributor | May 12, 2014, at 2:30 p.m US News & World Report
Yes, I have yet to see a refutation of Happer and others' explanation of spectrum saturation. Yesterday, someone pointed me to A Royal Society page which supposedly refuted the argument. It actually agreed that the warming effect of CO2 has declined and will continue to decline. It claimed only that there is still *some* room for further saturation (which Happer agrees with) but failed to put any numbers on it. Happer shows that the warming effect has already diminished greatly and is trivial going forward. That's too bad since the planet is too cold compared to optimal conditions.
There’s also the conversation with the planet, which will thank us for releasing all that sequestered carbon, enabling it to stay green for another couple of hundred million years. Of all the nonsense we have to tolerate from the climate change mob, the most grotesque by far is that carbon is a pollutant. Like a lot of things today, just couldn’t make it up.
Brilliant insights. Love the term "disposable" instead of "renewable". The power of the sun and the wind may be renewable in the sense of not being limited by a finite supply like oil, but the actual components of wind and solar power generation installations are certainly not renewable. So "renewable" is a term used by those with blinders on - they only see what they want to see.
Yes I think this is the narrative that needs to change. The FUEL of the wind and the sun may be “renewable” in the sense that it s effectively infinite by mankind’s timeline and certainly compared to the fuel of hydrocarbons in the earth’s crust. Likewise the fuel of nuclear fission should also be considered “renewable” if proximity to an infinite storage of potential energy is the only criteria for the term.
What is distinctly NOT RENEWABLE about wind and solar and only marginally better about hydrocarbons and nuclear, is the process to convert potential energy from the fuel source into energy for generating work.
Not enough is done to explain those trade-offs to the masses before fleecing them for subsidies.
But they went to so much trouble and spent so much money to pick out the term "renewable" and to also assure that the definition would quite certainly exclude nuclear at the Kyoto conference, according to a representative from Shell.
I expect that the lifetimes of thermal generation used to balance wind and solar will end up shortened due to increased ramping up and down. Thermal fatigue wears out mechanical parts!
Yes, intermittents make fossil fuels less efficient. They need to burn fuel to ramp up to running temperatures. They belch out carbon and pollution while they do so, but do not generate electricity during that time.
That’s a great point that doesn’t get attention. Rotating machines prefer equilibrium run status, and the asynchronous manner they’re being abused will degrade their longevity.
Aug 24·edited Aug 24Liked by Isaac Orr, Mitch Rolling
Great work, gents. This mechanical engineer knows solar and wind = cost/benefit = infinity.
It is amazing how the 'energy' companies have stolen billions from taxpayers without recompense.
Worse, I live 40 miles northeast of the Cities and they are now paying our beloved farmers more to cover their fertile lands with toxic panels; Cadmium was outlawed years ago in industry.
"Single use plastic" is a great comparison - particularly when thinking about the recent failure of the Nantucket Wind blade. Lazard's LCOE+ is showing a better picture of the large longer-term costs of solar and wind, particularly when the cost of storage is included..
The better I understand power generation, the less I trust the work of Lazard. If wind and solar are "single use plastic," Lazard's estimates of LCOE are a "single use metric"
At one point Lazard was very careful to state that LCOE numbers should not be used to compare solar/wind with other energy sources. They also displayed them on separate graphs. Then they abandoned the disclaimers and put them on the same graphic.
An interesting perspective. But don’t you need to compare with the costs of dismantling nuclear stations and dealing with nuclear waste for centuries, coal mining slag heaps, gas drilling platforms etc?
Hi Dave, this analysis doesn’t look at the cost of decommissioning any of the power stations, it’s just the cost to build, maintain or repower existing facilities.
Unlike other energy sources, nuclear power plant decommissioning costs are paid for by assessing a small charge for each kilowatt-hour generated. Per NRC rules, those funds are held in a trust account for eventual plant decommissioning. ....And what you call nuclear waste is extremely valuable. Only about 5% of the energy in the fuel has been used. France is reprocessing its spent nuclear fuel to improve the efficiency of the nuclear fuel cycle - and reduce the eventual waste volume. The eventual fate of the material that can't be utilized will be deep storage in stable rock.
And it's worth pointing out that it is miniscule compared to the size of wind/solor graveyards. In terms of mining, I would bet the uranium mining safety and environmental factors are far better than those for rare earth minerals used in solar/batteries.
...and James, the mining of uranium will be much less needed if the spent nuclear fuel we already have sitting in dry storage casks is re-used, as mentioned by Gene Nelson.
True. Unless the quality of the uranium deposit is really high, like some mines in Canada, uranium is now extracted from subterranean deposits via "in-situ leaching." which minimizes environmental degradation and risk to miners. The same cannot be said for cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Here's a 2024 Deutsche Welle article: https://www.dw.com/en/drc-struggles-to-make-cobalt-mining-more-transparent/a-68610784 Child labor and unsafe mines are a lethal combination in a nation that supplies about 50% of the world's supply of cobalt.
Good point, but my guess is that natural gas easily wins in this cost comparison as well. Assuming that we are talking about shale gas, the pads are actually quite small in comparison. Once you move all the transportable equipment, you are left with a small parking lot. It is probably left to the landowner in the contract whether they want keep the parking lot or have it destroyed. My guess most would want to keep the parking lot for a potential revenue source later.
Either way, I doubt that it is a major expenditure compared to the other energy sources.
"Makes energy more expensive (so it violates what should be the primary goal of energy policy)"
Yes it makes some types of energy more expensive to cover their externalities so as to discourage those forms. That's the whole concept!
"Does not deal with most of the negative side effects of energy"
Like pollution I suppose? So call it something else and do cover all those other negative effects.
"Amount will be set by politics, not science"
Rational political policy needs to be based on science. Fearing government policy is an excuse to do nothing.
"Is Regressive"
Back to your first point I suppose.
"Is unlikely to be implemented"
Again, an excuse to do nothing.
"Disincentivizes natural gas"
So? Scientific consensus holds that gas leaks have even more greenhouse consequences. Granted not nearly the same particulate pollution. Besides, policy can easily set different tax rates for NG.
"(in some cases) Will tax the wrong energy producers."
Oh? I can find no explanation of this one in your article. Examples?
Thanks, gents. Don't be discouraged by the peanut gallery here. I appreciate you mentioning some factors in passing but not analyzing everything to keep this readable, many commenters missed that, or perhaps they are looking for a 1000-page analysis in the wrong place.
I'm curious if the nuclear costs are so high because of regulation or not here. I suspect so. And on the flip side, there are definitely artificial (not free market) forces making alt-energy capex lower, and I'll look into how that is accounted for in the numbers you chose.
Yes, dozens of regulatory hurdles, approvals, permits, licenses are needed from federal, state, and local authorities, most of whom are not engineers or energy experts. I hope this is all streamlined as the inadequacy of the power grid results in enough blackouts to demand attention to our dire need for nuclear power plants. Cut the red tape!
Regulation definitely makes nuclear multiple times more expensive than it need be. Just a few years ago South Korea was building nuclear plants for a quarter of the cost in the USA -- and closer to what it used to cost in the USA.
There's no physical/economic reason that nuclear plants must be so expensive. We used to build them for under $1B in 2005 equivalent dollars. I suspect we could do that now if gave nuclear the kind of preferences, never mind subsidies, that we give wind and solar.
Someone smarter than me needs to put a full price tag on all the missing data in those estimates that sound like this: "wind/solar/EVs are so wasteful that a they make a drunken sailor look frugal, and that's before we throw in storage & transmission costs, grid upgrades, capacity/reliability issues..."
This explains why the LCOE is-like most accounting entries-useless when presenting an apple to apples comparison of current and future power plants developments. If you believe-as I do-that the IRA & similar legislation are more about industrial policy than environmental you will come to understand that payouts are out the heart of industrial policy when it comes to large projects. As a results the amount of electricity won't matter as much as the GDP inflation. Emissions does not even matter because the lowering of emissions are a dividend of the Oil & Gas industry.
I have a question regarding Solar panels and wind turbines capital costs.
Are these based on building them using cheap fossil fuels? Eg 4 cent mwh in China. How expensive would they be using power generated by solar or end? And then doesn’t the second generation of infrastructure get even more expensive? Spiraling evermore?
Hi Ross and thanks for your question. Unfortunately I don’t know the answer on the cost of power used to produce them, but if you’re using expensive energy to create more expensive energy harvesters, then everything gets more expensive
There was a recent article/report (can't remember where now) regarding carbon intensity of solar panels with a similar ilk.
Apparently, the commonly used figures for the carbon intensity of solar panels are way too low, because the estimates were made using an assumption of a grid with an EU mix of fuel for powering the manufacturing. If one actually uses the grid in China with its coal-heavy generation, the CO2 intensity of solar panels is much much higher and much more realistic.
I have been fighting solar and wind for just over 4 years now and boy have I learned a lot, with much more to go!
My first thoughts during this journey were exactly what is being said here by Isaac and Mitch. "Graveyards all across Texas" has been my mantra now for years!
These sites will not be cleaned up, will not be recycled, will not be taken care of and as long as the green grift is in. I talk to people across the state who say they know a solar site that is not working, or damaged or left. I know people who have had wind turbines fall on their property from the neighbors, or turbines which burn.
If you think the orphan well program is bad, think again - those are only a few acres and mostly simple to fix - about $50,000-$80,000 per well, if there are no problems. Oil and gas pay into those funds. Wind and solar have nothing and anything that is proposed is not worth having since other strings are attached in the companies favor! Landowners seem to be clueless that they are responsible. I know one who was trying to get the county to clean up..... he should have put some of those earning aside, so no sympathy here!
We have about 250,000 acres under production in Texas for solar - that's about 100 million solar panels to recycle - at $20-30 each to recycle.... won't happen. Wind turbine - about $500,000 to remove - won't happen. Let's hope it's not our tax dollars to remove them!
These solar farms will sell and sell again and again, and be bundled up like bad debt and sold again to whatever bidder will take them. Single entity corporations will simply walk away when the production is worthless and they have no insurance.
Weather vulnerable, weather dependent! Not a good combination for the consumer!
But coal plants are currently operating after being in service for 50 -60 years and with refurbishment, they could last much longer. I also think there is a much better use case for recycling nuclear fuel than wind turbine blades.
Nice article guys. I have a couple of quibbles. In the older solar farms in CA they are replacing panels at 10-12 years due to degradation, and friendly repowering subsidies. The farms sign contracts for a specific amount of power and as degradation sets in they fall short. There is no way out of the contract which can be 30 years, so they repower or breach and shut down. They can’t just add more as the increased short circuit current threatens the surrounding grid. The solar farm owners are all LLCs owned by LLCs owned by LLCs so they can just walk away, which they will do if the subsidies stop.
Even if you install 3500 MW of wind and solar it won’t replace the 1000MW coal plant without an unaffordable array of batteries. When you consider efficiencies (70% for grid scale batteries) you’d need at least 5000 MW. This of course doesn’t include long term storage, because it hasn’t been invented yet, so until it is you need to keep the coal plant on standby.
So-called renewables like weather-dependent wind and solar are not only short lifespan and non-recyclable, they are expensive to build and integrate, heavily resource-depleting, inefficient and unreliable. The tragedy is that there is no need whatsoever to attempt to reduce CO2 emissions because atmospheric CO2 is already “saturated”, which means even a doubling of its concentration from the present level will cause negligible global warming. The only reason they push ahead with these totally inappropriate technologies is because their ulterior purpose is to wreck the economy, deindustrialise, create deliberate food shortages and limit the population.
What is driving purchasing solar and wind generation? taxpayer-funded subsidy seekers are part of the problem. Here's one example of a well-heeled elite who admitted circa 2014 he is on the gravy train at taxpayer expense. (Buffett's father was a four-term U.S. Representative from Nebraska.) Multi-billionaire Warren Buffett explained the rationale for solar and wind generation in 2014:
"For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit."
"Big Wind's Bogus Subsidies - Giving tax credits to the wind energy industry is a waste of time and money."
By Nancy Pfotenhauer, Contributor | May 12, 2014, at 2:30 p.m US News & World Report
https://tinyurl.com/Buffett-Wind-Scam
Follow the money. Show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcome, right. Charlie Munger said that often. Uncle Warren is in on the scam.
Yes. The late Charles Munger was Warren Buffet's right-hand man. He knew.
Yes, I have yet to see a refutation of Happer and others' explanation of spectrum saturation. Yesterday, someone pointed me to A Royal Society page which supposedly refuted the argument. It actually agreed that the warming effect of CO2 has declined and will continue to decline. It claimed only that there is still *some* room for further saturation (which Happer agrees with) but failed to put any numbers on it. Happer shows that the warming effect has already diminished greatly and is trivial going forward. That's too bad since the planet is too cold compared to optimal conditions.
Agreed 💯
There’s also the conversation with the planet, which will thank us for releasing all that sequestered carbon, enabling it to stay green for another couple of hundred million years. Of all the nonsense we have to tolerate from the climate change mob, the most grotesque by far is that carbon is a pollutant. Like a lot of things today, just couldn’t make it up.
Brilliant insights. Love the term "disposable" instead of "renewable". The power of the sun and the wind may be renewable in the sense of not being limited by a finite supply like oil, but the actual components of wind and solar power generation installations are certainly not renewable. So "renewable" is a term used by those with blinders on - they only see what they want to see.
Yes I think this is the narrative that needs to change. The FUEL of the wind and the sun may be “renewable” in the sense that it s effectively infinite by mankind’s timeline and certainly compared to the fuel of hydrocarbons in the earth’s crust. Likewise the fuel of nuclear fission should also be considered “renewable” if proximity to an infinite storage of potential energy is the only criteria for the term.
What is distinctly NOT RENEWABLE about wind and solar and only marginally better about hydrocarbons and nuclear, is the process to convert potential energy from the fuel source into energy for generating work.
Not enough is done to explain those trade-offs to the masses before fleecing them for subsidies.
Good point.
But they went to so much trouble and spent so much money to pick out the term "renewable" and to also assure that the definition would quite certainly exclude nuclear at the Kyoto conference, according to a representative from Shell.
I expect that the lifetimes of thermal generation used to balance wind and solar will end up shortened due to increased ramping up and down. Thermal fatigue wears out mechanical parts!
Yes, intermittents make fossil fuels less efficient. They need to burn fuel to ramp up to running temperatures. They belch out carbon and pollution while they do so, but do not generate electricity during that time.
That’s a great point that doesn’t get attention. Rotating machines prefer equilibrium run status, and the asynchronous manner they’re being abused will degrade their longevity.
I've seen this point mentioned many times, but never in the mainstream media.
Great work, gents. This mechanical engineer knows solar and wind = cost/benefit = infinity.
It is amazing how the 'energy' companies have stolen billions from taxpayers without recompense.
Worse, I live 40 miles northeast of the Cities and they are now paying our beloved farmers more to cover their fertile lands with toxic panels; Cadmium was outlawed years ago in industry.
"Single use plastic" is a great comparison - particularly when thinking about the recent failure of the Nantucket Wind blade. Lazard's LCOE+ is showing a better picture of the large longer-term costs of solar and wind, particularly when the cost of storage is included..
https://www.lazard.com/media/xemfey0k/lazards-lcoeplus-june-2024-_vf.pdf "Nuclear" is mentioned 25 times. The cost to firm intermittency is shown on page 15 of 48. Lazard acknowledges the importance of baseload generation. Nuclear power contributes the greatest amount of necessary synchronous grid inertia (SGI.) However, SGI is not mentioned in the Lazard LCOE+ analysis.. See https://greennuke.substack.com/p/why-is-grid-inertia-important for an introduction. (The article comments provide additional details. )
The better I understand power generation, the less I trust the work of Lazard. If wind and solar are "single use plastic," Lazard's estimates of LCOE are a "single use metric"
Well, given that Lazard's LCOE numbers were lies for more than a decade, distrust is warranted.
At one point Lazard was very careful to state that LCOE numbers should not be used to compare solar/wind with other energy sources. They also displayed them on separate graphs. Then they abandoned the disclaimers and put them on the same graphic.
Their media mentions soared…
An interesting perspective. But don’t you need to compare with the costs of dismantling nuclear stations and dealing with nuclear waste for centuries, coal mining slag heaps, gas drilling platforms etc?
Hi Dave, this analysis doesn’t look at the cost of decommissioning any of the power stations, it’s just the cost to build, maintain or repower existing facilities.
Unlike other energy sources, nuclear power plant decommissioning costs are paid for by assessing a small charge for each kilowatt-hour generated. Per NRC rules, those funds are held in a trust account for eventual plant decommissioning. ....And what you call nuclear waste is extremely valuable. Only about 5% of the energy in the fuel has been used. France is reprocessing its spent nuclear fuel to improve the efficiency of the nuclear fuel cycle - and reduce the eventual waste volume. The eventual fate of the material that can't be utilized will be deep storage in stable rock.
And it's worth pointing out that it is miniscule compared to the size of wind/solor graveyards. In terms of mining, I would bet the uranium mining safety and environmental factors are far better than those for rare earth minerals used in solar/batteries.
...and James, the mining of uranium will be much less needed if the spent nuclear fuel we already have sitting in dry storage casks is re-used, as mentioned by Gene Nelson.
True. Unless the quality of the uranium deposit is really high, like some mines in Canada, uranium is now extracted from subterranean deposits via "in-situ leaching." which minimizes environmental degradation and risk to miners. The same cannot be said for cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Here's a 2024 Deutsche Welle article: https://www.dw.com/en/drc-struggles-to-make-cobalt-mining-more-transparent/a-68610784 Child labor and unsafe mines are a lethal combination in a nation that supplies about 50% of the world's supply of cobalt.
Good point, but my guess is that natural gas easily wins in this cost comparison as well. Assuming that we are talking about shale gas, the pads are actually quite small in comparison. Once you move all the transportable equipment, you are left with a small parking lot. It is probably left to the landowner in the contract whether they want keep the parking lot or have it destroyed. My guess most would want to keep the parking lot for a potential revenue source later.
Either way, I doubt that it is a major expenditure compared to the other energy sources.
https://www.aogr.com/magazine/cover-story/leading-operators-improve-efficiency-and-effectiveness-of-multiwell-pad-ope
Sure, unless and until the externality of carbon emission effects are factored in. A hefty enough carbon tax would change the cost equation.
I believe that a carbon tax is a very bad idea:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-a-carbon-tax-will-not-work
"Makes energy more expensive (so it violates what should be the primary goal of energy policy)"
Yes it makes some types of energy more expensive to cover their externalities so as to discourage those forms. That's the whole concept!
"Does not deal with most of the negative side effects of energy"
Like pollution I suppose? So call it something else and do cover all those other negative effects.
"Amount will be set by politics, not science"
Rational political policy needs to be based on science. Fearing government policy is an excuse to do nothing.
"Is Regressive"
Back to your first point I suppose.
"Is unlikely to be implemented"
Again, an excuse to do nothing.
"Disincentivizes natural gas"
So? Scientific consensus holds that gas leaks have even more greenhouse consequences. Granted not nearly the same particulate pollution. Besides, policy can easily set different tax rates for NG.
"(in some cases) Will tax the wrong energy producers."
Oh? I can find no explanation of this one in your article. Examples?
Lease the parking lot to hold spent nuclear fuel canisters...
Good overview article!
Extremely costly to decommission wind turbines and solar panels are not really recyclable.
Ex.
https://tucoschild.substack.com/p/wind-turbines-are-full-of-sh-and
https://tucoschild.substack.com/p/hail-marys-and-shattered-dreams-an
Thanks, gents. Don't be discouraged by the peanut gallery here. I appreciate you mentioning some factors in passing but not analyzing everything to keep this readable, many commenters missed that, or perhaps they are looking for a 1000-page analysis in the wrong place.
I'm curious if the nuclear costs are so high because of regulation or not here. I suspect so. And on the flip side, there are definitely artificial (not free market) forces making alt-energy capex lower, and I'll look into how that is accounted for in the numbers you chose.
Yes, dozens of regulatory hurdles, approvals, permits, licenses are needed from federal, state, and local authorities, most of whom are not engineers or energy experts. I hope this is all streamlined as the inadequacy of the power grid results in enough blackouts to demand attention to our dire need for nuclear power plants. Cut the red tape!
Don't forget unlimited third party interventions in the licensing process even after the license has been granted.
Regulation definitely makes nuclear multiple times more expensive than it need be. Just a few years ago South Korea was building nuclear plants for a quarter of the cost in the USA -- and closer to what it used to cost in the USA.
There's no physical/economic reason that nuclear plants must be so expensive. We used to build them for under $1B in 2005 equivalent dollars. I suspect we could do that now if gave nuclear the kind of preferences, never mind subsidies, that we give wind and solar.
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter9.html
Someone smarter than me needs to put a full price tag on all the missing data in those estimates that sound like this: "wind/solar/EVs are so wasteful that a they make a drunken sailor look frugal, and that's before we throw in storage & transmission costs, grid upgrades, capacity/reliability issues..."
This explains why the LCOE is-like most accounting entries-useless when presenting an apple to apples comparison of current and future power plants developments. If you believe-as I do-that the IRA & similar legislation are more about industrial policy than environmental you will come to understand that payouts are out the heart of industrial policy when it comes to large projects. As a results the amount of electricity won't matter as much as the GDP inflation. Emissions does not even matter because the lowering of emissions are a dividend of the Oil & Gas industry.
Love that you cats go on Justice's show... Keep up the great work! Yes, I subscribe to the CoAE.
Thanks, Danimal! Mitch and I left CoAE to start our own group but I’m glad you subscribe there!
Hi.
I have a question regarding Solar panels and wind turbines capital costs.
Are these based on building them using cheap fossil fuels? Eg 4 cent mwh in China. How expensive would they be using power generated by solar or end? And then doesn’t the second generation of infrastructure get even more expensive? Spiraling evermore?
Hi Ross and thanks for your question. Unfortunately I don’t know the answer on the cost of power used to produce them, but if you’re using expensive energy to create more expensive energy harvesters, then everything gets more expensive
There was a recent article/report (can't remember where now) regarding carbon intensity of solar panels with a similar ilk.
Apparently, the commonly used figures for the carbon intensity of solar panels are way too low, because the estimates were made using an assumption of a grid with an EU mix of fuel for powering the manufacturing. If one actually uses the grid in China with its coal-heavy generation, the CO2 intensity of solar panels is much much higher and much more realistic.
Great article, and thanks for including natural gas. For construction costs, did you use CCGT or simple cycle?
I am also curious where you got the 80% cost for repowering.
I have been fighting solar and wind for just over 4 years now and boy have I learned a lot, with much more to go!
My first thoughts during this journey were exactly what is being said here by Isaac and Mitch. "Graveyards all across Texas" has been my mantra now for years!
These sites will not be cleaned up, will not be recycled, will not be taken care of and as long as the green grift is in. I talk to people across the state who say they know a solar site that is not working, or damaged or left. I know people who have had wind turbines fall on their property from the neighbors, or turbines which burn.
If you think the orphan well program is bad, think again - those are only a few acres and mostly simple to fix - about $50,000-$80,000 per well, if there are no problems. Oil and gas pay into those funds. Wind and solar have nothing and anything that is proposed is not worth having since other strings are attached in the companies favor! Landowners seem to be clueless that they are responsible. I know one who was trying to get the county to clean up..... he should have put some of those earning aside, so no sympathy here!
We have about 250,000 acres under production in Texas for solar - that's about 100 million solar panels to recycle - at $20-30 each to recycle.... won't happen. Wind turbine - about $500,000 to remove - won't happen. Let's hope it's not our tax dollars to remove them!
These solar farms will sell and sell again and again, and be bundled up like bad debt and sold again to whatever bidder will take them. Single entity corporations will simply walk away when the production is worthless and they have no insurance.
Weather vulnerable, weather dependent! Not a good combination for the consumer!
Great article guys and great analogy!