“Green” Energy Is Not So Green As You Think

August 6, 2019

The eco-left is infatuated with wind and solar. Far-left members like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez want to remake the entire American energy economy with these technologies. They envision seas of solar panels and wind farms.

But they never tell you how those solar panels and windmills are made in the first place.

That’s because the process is not so “green” after all.

Mark Millis, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, explains in the Wall Street Journal that renewable energy is a “misnomer.”

“Wind and solar machines and batteries are built from nonrenewable materials,” Millis explains. “And they wear out. Old equipment must be decommissioned, generating millions of tons of waste.”

Millis puts numbers behind his claim. Creating just one electric car battery “requires digging up, moving and processing more than 500,000 pounds of raw materials somewhere on the planet.”

Building just a single wind turbine “requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of nonrecyclable plastic.” Solar is even worse, requiring “even more cement, steel and glass—not to mention other metals.”

Those metals will likely be mined from countries “with oppressive labor practices,” such as China and the Congo. If your electric car or solar panel relies on cobalt from the Congo, you are likely complicit in child slave labor.

Is this “green?” Hardly.