Monday, August 19, 2019

Renewable energy depends heavily on rare elements

To meet the demands of the Green New Deal, which proposes to convert the US economy to zero emissions, renewable power by 2030, there will be a lot more of these mines gouged into the crust of the earth. That’s because nearly every renewable energy source depends upon non-renewable and frequently hard-to-access minerals: solar panels use indium, turbines use neodymium, batteries use lithium, and all require kilotons of steel, tin, silver, and copper. The renewable-energy supply chain is a complicated hopscotch around the periodic table and around the world. To make a high-capacity solar panel, one might need copper (atomic number 29) from Chile, indium (49) from Australia, gallium (31) from China, and selenium (34) from Germany. Many of the most efficient, direct-drive wind turbines require a couple pounds of the rare-earth metal neodymium, and there’s 140 pounds of lithium in each Tesla.
https://communemag.com/between-the-devil-and-the-green-new-deal/ 

Monday, August 5, 2019

Norwegian study shows "sustainable forest management" is not working

While SFM has been increasingly integrated into legal frameworks, it seems to remain poorly applied in practice, and most commercial logging remain stuck into the paradigm of “sustainable income”, instead of progressing towards “sustainable provision of goods and services”. Poor forest-related law enforcement in producer countries and low prices of wood or carbon credits are creating uncertainties among stakeholders, who generally prefer fast return on investment.
https://redd-monitor.org/2018/01/30/norwegian-funded-study-exposes-the-myth-of-sustainable-forest-management/