As more and more vendors take on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), more work will be put in to making solar and wind power completely recyclable and sustainable.
Other uses of solar energy provide much more direct energy savings with lower up-front cost. These uses include solar batch water heaters, solar air heating, and solar cooking.
Wind Energy can also be obtained with a mind to conservation of species that fly. For example, the RSPB, the equivalent of America's Audobon Society, has a wind turbine that
shuts off during periods when avian species are about.
Solar panels can be recycled. Laten Corie, a respected environmentalist in our area, wrote: “The materials in solar panels are not all that exotic. The frames are made of common aluminum, the outer surface is just tempered
glass, and the backing is usually made of PET, PP, PVF or other commonly recycled plastics. These are materials that are so common for recycing that they are included in our curbside recycling programs.
“There is also some copper wire. The silicone collector surface...is also highly recyclable, to be remade into more polycrystalline solar panels.”
Wind turbines could be made more recyclable if they stopped using plexiglass for wind turbine blades. Plexiglass is sort-of recyclable but really not worth the effort.
What really needs to be done is to make wind turbine blades out of more recyclable materials such as wood or metal. The only purpose of the wind turbine blades is
to catch wind and could be made out of any solid material, like has been done since the 1800's.
It is important to get off of coal, oil, gasoline, natural gas, and nuclear because these solutions are far worse (coal, oil, and gasoline are making the global warming problem quite bad,
natural gas also contributes to global warming since it releases a lot of methane, and nuclear creates extremely toxic waste that stays around for hundreds of thousands of years that must
be constantly guarded and also the constant risk of meltdown from nuclear reactors). We must arrive at a more sustainable lifestyle but existing methods of renewable energy may
buy us time so that Global Warming will be lessened while we learn more sustainable behavior patterns.
As an individual, we each might be able to make a difference by switching to a 100% clean electricity provider or installing solar panels on our homes.
In Illinois, you can go to Plug in Illinois to choose an electricity provider that provides 100% renewable energy, typically through renewable
energy credits, which is a valid way to ensure more renewable energy is used and less fossil fuels or dirty energy are used. Or, better yet, find a nearby community solar farm.
David Kraft made a great point that also supports the idea of a 100% renewable energy grid that uses no natural gas or nuclear power or other forms of dirty
electricity:
"One of the more egregious pronouncements was that (paraphrase here) 'we don't have utility-scale storage available for the renewables.' That is a hugely out-of-date
and erroneous claim. Here is an example of a site that is
dedicated to energy storage. It will give you an idea of how far storage (and NOT just battery storage) has progressed, and why that claim is simply false and out of date.
"For example, 10 GW of storage written about below is the equivalent of 9 (N-I-N-E!) Byron-sized nuclear reactors -- all constructed in just one year! It takes more than a
decade, and countless cost overruns to build just one nuclear plant. There are many other examples one could point to -- the TESLA facility built below budget and finished early in
Australia; the fact that the Aussies are using wind power for desalination, and plan more of that (as well as hydrogen generation); etc."
