An important reminder “renewables” refer to the energy source being converted to electicity, and not the materials required to build the machines needed to do the conversion.
The unpublished notebooks of J. M. Korhonen
It is well known that there is no such thing as a free lunch. However, it is somewhat less known that there is no such thing as free energy, either.
Despite all the hoopla about new renewable energy sources being “free” and “practically unlimited” in a sense that no one owns the Sun nor the wind, the fact remains that in order to harness these energies, we need an immense construction effort. This, unfortunately, is neither free nor unrestricted in the material sense. As the above graph taken from a recent study commentary by Vidal, Goffé & Arndt in Nature Geoscience (2013) shows, projected renewable energy deployments would very soon outstrip the current global production of several key materials. By the author’s estimates, if we are to follow the lead of renewables only-advocates, renewable energy projects would consume the entire annual copper, concrete and steel production by 2035 at the latest, annihilate aluminum…
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