Ecoblogi – A Blog by Daniel Elkama

Good news: renewable energy does not warm the climate, because its impact is negligible in the global heat budget. The only way it could warm is through the carbon emissions from its construction, but also that is negligible.

An otherwise wise professor once made a mistake when he thought that all energy production, including renewable energy, warms the planet considerably, because all energy eventually turns into heat. It is true that all energy eventually turns into heat according to thermodynamics, but we can increase renewable energy from this perspective almost indefinitely, and its impact on global temperature will never be significant. Let’s examine the matter in more detail:

All energy eventually turns into heat. The basic principle of physics is that energy is never lost, it only changes form. When we produce energy from fossil fuels, heat is eventually generated as waste heat from machines and equipment. The same is true for nuclear power and also for renewable energy: for example, a wind turbine converts the kinetic energy of the wind and a solar panel converts solar radiation into electricity; these forms of energy also eventually turn into heat when electricity is used and devices heat up.

However, the production of renewable energy does not bring any extra heat to the Earth that would not already be here. In principle, all energy ends up as thermal energy on the Earth, but in the case of renewables, this does not have any relevance to climate change, as it does with greenhouse gases. Renewable energy is based on solar radiation, which would come here anyway, or geothermal energy, which would be released anyway. Instead, nuclear power and fossil fuels produce heat that is extra. Nuclear power releases a huge amount of energy condensed in uranium, and fossil fuels release ancient solar energy accumulated in fossil deposits (fuels) that has been stored out of circulation. In addition, the burning of fossil fuels releases a huge amount of carbon dioxide into the air, which in the atmosphere absorbs extra solar thermal energy that would otherwise leave the Earth by reflection. This is the main reason to climate change.

The important point is that wind and solar energy would have come to Earth anyway. So they do not add heat, as the energy from wind and sun is first converted to electricity and finally to heat, which would have happened anyway to wind and sun energy that had not been converted to electricity. Solar energy comes to Earth anyway, regardless of whether we use it or not. The production of electricity with solar panels does not add to the total amount of heat on Earth, but only changes the form of the energy (radiation -> electricity -> finally waste heat). Only then could it have a small impact if the solar panels were on top of a glacier and thus affected the albedo, i.e. reduced reflection. Even then, the effect would be small. Wind energy comes from the uneven heating of solar radiation (temperature differences in the atmosphere). When wind turbines slow down the wind, it changes the local airflow and temperature a little, but the effect is negligible globally.

The energy absorbed by the Earth, which generates wind and the warming effect of the sun, is enormous, about 173,000 TW on a global scale. The electricity consumption of the entire world is negligible in comparison. The average power of the entire global electricity consumption on Earth is only 3.1 TW. So even if all of this were wind and solar power, humanity would only utilize about 0.000018% of the solar energy coming to Earth. The waste heat from renewable energy production is therefore completely negligible on a global scale.

So in summary: although renewable energy ultimately produces heat, it is an extremely small part of the Earth’s total energy, and it can safely be considered climate neutral in terms of its warming effect.

The only way renewable energy can warm the climate is that the construction of renewable energy produces carbon dioxide emissions. Peat emissions are 1060 g/kWh. Oil emissions are 650 g/kWh, coal 820 g/kWh, while solar power only 48 g/kWh and wind power a paltry 11 g/kWh. Compared to oil, solar power emissions are 7% and wind power only 1.7%. This takes into account the life cycle, construction and use. In the future, wind and solar power emissions per energy unit will be even lower as the circular economy and recycling, etc. develop. On average, global emissions are 440 g/kWh. If half of global energy were produced by solar power and half by wind power, emissions would be only 6.7% of current total emissions at current emission levels and perhaps only 1% as technology develops, i.e. at a fully sustainable level, and energy production could also increase from this, because, for example, the circular economy and information technology require more energy. In many sectors, energy consumption is constantly decreasing as energy efficiency increases. This is also absolutely important.

Renewable energy is one of the most important ways to save the earth, the other is the production of plant protein and organic agroecological farming, which at best it would be carbon negative and would bind carbon. These are steps that humanity absolutely must take and this direction seems to be a permanent trend.

Daniel Elkama