When Renewables Meet Their Limits to Growth

The clean green future you were sold might be out of stock sooner than you think. Photo by Appolinary Kalashnikova on Unsplash

Electricity generation from “renewable” sources have recently hit record highs in Europe. According to Carbon Brief: “Wind and solar growth over the past decade pushed EU fossil-fuel generation in 2024 to its lowest level in 40 years, despite the long-term decline of nuclear power.” While this is certainly good news for those who believe “renewables” are a way out of the environmental mess industrial civilization has created, the material intensity of renewables — some five hundred times that of gas turbines — will eventually make their further deployment impossible. Limits to growth, anyone?

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Let’s start with some recent headlines in stark contrast with the cheerful Carbon Brief report cited above. “Denmark’s Auction Flop Reveals Cracks in Europe’s Offshore Wind Industry” — via Bloomberg. “German solar sector in distress as glut of panels heaps pressure on industry” — from Financial Times. So, pray tell, if wind and solar is such a roaring success across the EU, why businesses building and buying them want none of it anymore? And why does a deputy chief executive of a solar industry lobby group make comments such as this one:

“You cannot have a green transition with red numbers. The sector needs to be profitable.” — Dries Acke, SolarPower Europe

Well, as usual, the rabbit hole goes much deeper than what is revealed in mainstream media. “Renewables” have many inherent flaws rooted in physics, chemistry, manufacturing technology and atmospheric conditions (aka weather). Pointing them out has nothing to do with denying climate change, though. (For the record: I fully accept the science behind climate change, and that it is caused entirely by us fire apes burning carbon rich fuels.) That is not the point here, however. As a manufacturing and supply chain guy, working in the field of electronic equipment sourcing and production for almost two decades now, I felt obliged to educate the public on the inherent limits to “green technologies”. Don’t get me wrong here: used sensibly in special applications, and only as a slight boost to the energy system, wind and solar could actually prove useful to our civilization on its long way down. Wanting to build an entire grid on renewables and hoping that it would somehow sustain business as usual, on the other hand, is magical thinking on steroids… Just like believing that fossil fuels will be here with us forever, or that they could not possibly cause harm to the living world and the climate of this planet. High time for some reality check.

Non-renewables

Contrary to the clever marketing trope, “renewables” are nowhere close to being renewable — hence the scare quotes around their name. They are “re-buildable” at best, but mostly not even that. Simply put many materials they are built from are neither recyclable nor can be made without using copious amounts of fossil fuels. So while the power of the sun and the wind remains practically limitless, the resources required to build the many essential — but completely non-recyclable — components of wind turbines and solar panels is not.

Let’s take two examples: wind turbine blades and polysilicon solar cells. Turbine blades are made of a composite material: a combination of fiber glass (made by burning natural gas) and epoxy resin (produced directly from crude oil and natural gas liquids). Likewise, polysilicon cells used in solar panels are made by smelting quartz crystals with coal, producing at least two CO2 molecules for every Silicone atom released from its original form (SiO2). Again, focus your attention not (only) on carbon emissions, but the basic fact that both resin making and silicone manufacturing requires large amounts of carbon atoms due to their unique chemical properties and broad-scale availability. And while you could use charcoal in both of these processes, the scale of building “renewables” simply prohibits this practice from becoming mainstream. Were it not for coal, oil and gas, we would have to cut down entire forests to make a few solar panels and turbine blades. What’s worse, we would be poised to repeat this decade after decade as old panels and turbines fail and must be replaced. You see, this is the biggest issue with “solutions”: they create even bigger “problems” than what they “solve”.

On top of their carbon-intensive nature both epoxy resin and poly-crystalline silicone wafers are unrecyclable. They are glued (chemically bonded (1)) to glass during the manufacturing process: fiberglass in case of wind turbine blades and plate glass in case of solar panels. The problem is, that these chemical bonds cannot be physically undone without completely destroying the material we want to salvage first. All we could get by trying to burn or melt such waste is toxic air pollution and highly contaminated molten glass. (We could experiment with various acids and solvents, but chances are that we would be producing more toxic sludge than useful recycled matter in the end.) These indispensable components to wind turbines and solar panels thus almost invariably end up in landfills, where they leak toxins (such as arsenic) into groundwater for decades if not centuries to come. The composite nature of these technologies will thus necessitate the continued mining of raw materials, alongside with the continued burning of fossil fuels and dumping of toxic waste; as long as we have fossil fuels to spare and minerals to mine (2).

“Renewables” are consumables — much like uranium fuel rods — toxic products of an inherently toxic and unsustainable industrial system.

A matter of density

When it comes to energy, density is king. The more condensed an energy form is, the more things we can do with it: travel further, carry more cargo, lift more weight, achieve higher temperatures — just to name a few applications. Unfortunately, none of this can be told about wind and solar. Both of these technologies require tons of building materials: mostly steel, concrete and glass (plus the special materials discussed above). Due to the weight of all this stuff, and the relatively mild heat and scattered light coming from the Sun, solar panels produce no more than 20 Watts for each kg of their mass, even on a sunny day. Meanwhile wind turbines, with their massive concrete bases and tall steel towers, generate a mere 6 Watts for every kg of their weight. (Batteries fare slightly better at 240 W/kg.) For comparison diesel fuel produces 13,000 Watts for every kg of fuel burned. A regular diesel engine weighing 150 kg can thus easily produce 110 kW of power, while the same feat would require 5.5 tons of solar panels directly lit by the Sun at noon. This is why there are no solar powered car, nor commercial planes powered by wind turbines.

Folks, we are talking about a difference in the range of multiple orders of magnitude, not something which could be bridged by some tweaking here and there. The super-low energy density of “renewables” necessitate their dispatch in absolutely staggering quantities, with all the mining, logistics, smelting, manufacturing and building involved. Many of these activities — especially the making of steel, copper, concrete and glass — require high temperatures (well above a 1000°C), and thus necessitates the burning of high energy density fuels (coal, oil and natural gas). This is why “renewables” cannot technically be built and deployed at scale by using “renewable” energy alone. Operating an assembly plant for solar panels or wind turbine components is one thing. Producing, smelting and shaping the raw materials needed into solar cells and machine parts is a completely different business, requiring a generous subsidy from fossil fuels.

The usual retort to these claims above, is that ‘then we will use the excess electricity generated by wind and solar to make hydrogen, which not only burns hot (near 2000°C) but can be made of water’ (sic). The problem again, lies in physics and scale: producing H2 from water via electrolysis requires a lot of electricity (3), a third of which goes to waste instantly (not to mention the energy needed to pump and purify water before it could be used). Another issue is storage: hydrogen is extremely light and thin at room temperature and normal pressure, requiring the super-chilling of the fuel (together with high pressure compression) to achieve reasonable storage volumes. Again, highly power-intensive things to do. But the biggest show stopper of all, as usual, is scale (4):

If we were converting ALL electricity produced by human civilization (globally) into hydrogen, we would get less than half of the heat — released by burning hydrogen in furnaces and smelters — than what we currently produce by burning coal alone... Think about that for a minute.

Apples to oranges

Intermittency is another drawback to “renewables” — foisted upon us by weather and Earth’s rotation. It is common knowledge that civilization needs electricity even if the Sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow. Just how badly wind speed and the availability of daylight affects the overall capacity factor (or the “availability”) of renewables, though, is barely known by the public. After reviewing real life data (5), though, one finds that the global average “availability” of solar generation is a mere 14.3%. The same ratio for Germany is even worse, standing at a mere 10.4%. Yes, you’ve read that right: Install panels with a 100 kW (nameplate) capacity, and get 10.4 kW in return on a yearly basis. (Wind energy fares a little better with 26.7% on average). For comparison if you installed a gas turbine instead, it could produce energy fairly reliably at a capacity factor around 90% (with 10% reserved for maintenance and inspection). Citing figures of installed capacity is thus as helpful as comparing apples to oranges.

Incorporating the real life “availability” of “renewables” into their power / weight ratio calculation, on the other hand, leaves us with a practical value of 2 W/kg for solar panels installed in Germany, and 1.6 W/kg for wind turbines on a global average. Again, compared to a modern gas turbine with a more than a 1000 Watts of electric output for every kg of material built into it, these numbers are truly minuscule. Again, the difference is not a couple of percentage points, but amounts to a five-hundred-fold decrease in energy density. And remember, all that concrete, steel, glass, copper, silver, rare earth metals, aluminum making up the weight of “renewables” had to be first mined, smelted and shaped into their final form by burning fossil fuels, then brought on site by diesel trucks and ships. (Meanwhile natural gas could be obtained by drilling a well.)

And these are just the averages, hiding the true story behind intermittency. Solar production peaks at noon, while wind is much like random noise in the system. Neither is really predictable, but creates huge load surges when they suddenly come online. Whenever the clouds clear over a large solar farm, the sudden increase in energy production sends a shock-wave through the grid, damaging sensitive equipment nearby. Similarly, when clouds return, a micro-blackout occurs (lasting a few milliseconds till back-up power comes online). These fluctuations in the supply of electricity has forced many companies with sensitive manufacturing equipment to install surge protectors and uninterruptible power supply units costing tens or hundreds of thousands of Euros (depending on size) or buying natural gas powered generation units to produce their own stable electricity supply. “Renewables” impose many hidden costs onto both grid operators, and companies operating sensitive technologies (such as server farms for AI, or chip manufacturing equipment.)

Economics

Besides the costs incurred to businesses, adding more and more “renewables” to the grid resulted in growing price volatility — threatening the very business model behind wind and solar farms. And this is where we get to the economics of the whole endeavor. While investing into extracting and burning fossil fuels was a no-brainer from a business perspective (by disregarding the environmental costs as externalities, of course), the same could not be told about renewables. Thanks to the material and energy intensity of their production, the many unrecyclable parts, and their ultra-low power to weight ratios, deploying these technologies require a massive upfront investment, subsidies, tax breaks and rock-solid assurances that the electricity they produce will be bought by grid operators.

Despite the growth in wind and solar generation, overall electricity production in the EU is stagnating since the early 2000’s signaling an end to economic growth in the old continent. Source: Our World in Data

Recently some serious issues arose, though, on both sides of the return on investment calculation. On the investment side rising coal, natural gas and oil prices have directly resulted in increased manufacturing and building costs. (Remember, most of the materials by weight in “renewables” are glass, concrete and steel: all of which require huge of fossil fuels to make.) And while costs have been falling throughout the past two decades, thanks to China and its abundant coal supplies, this trend seems to have stopped and reversed in many regions around the world — including Europe. Cost inflation was made all the worse by slapping CO2 tariffs on imported raw materials — achieving the opposite effect than what the legislator had in mind. Similarly rising interest rates made borrowing large sums of money (necessary to build wind and solar farms) much more expensive.

On the other side of the equation — when trying to sell the electricity produced — overproduction of power has resulted in negative prices during daytime in many cases. Since power generation from “renewables” are not plannable — hence their nick-name: ‘weather-dependent’ energy sources — when the wind finally picks up, blows away all the clouds and every wind turbine and solar panel begins to produce electricity all at once, electricity prices go into deeply negative territory. (Yes, that means that the grid operator begins to punish producers for overproducing electricity, thus forcing them to curtail production.) Let’s take the UK for example. In order to lessen the pain for grid scale wind and solar operators, a compensation scheme was devised costing UK consumers £1.3 billion 2024 alone. Addressing the curtailment problem, on the other hand, would require a costly grid expansion, estimated at £40 billion — annually.

The same goes to Germany and many other locations with a high adoption rate of wind and solar. Both the investment and the return part of the equation went haywire: increasing fossil fuel costs and high interest rates wrecked the investment part, while overproduction of daytime electricity has ruined the return part. Again, this is nothing new: the physical characteristics of these devices were known for more than a century now, and the economic consequences of reaching a higher than 15% solar and 30% wind penetration were also clearly demonstrated more than a decade ago (Hirth, 2013) (5).

Storage

Li-ion batteries, on the other hand, needed to balance power production and consumption cost a fortune when built at grid scale, and thus only a very limited amount of them was installed so far (storing only minutes worth of electricity supply). Just like in the case of the danish auction flop, where too much wind power capacity has reduced prices to the point where new installations became unviable, installing more batteries would reduce the economic incentives of further investment into grid scale storage. Adding more batteries reduces the price arbitrage (the difference between negative daytime prices and super-high evening prices), and thus the incentive also to build more. This is not to mention the difference between summer and winter demand. Long term storage is not viable on an economic basis; based on the price difference alone it simply does not worth storing electricity for half a year. Energy storage and “grid expansion” has become a magical unicorn just like carbon capture and storage: based on the science it’s badly needed but neither the energy balance nor economic calculations support it...

That leaves us with fossil fuels as the cheapest form of energy storage. ‘But, but, but… But what about pumped hydro?!’ — one might ask. Well, while pumped hydro looks promising on paper, we ought to have started to build them a long time ago to match the scale and urgency of the situation today. Besides, these are not magic bullets either: countries like Germany or Denmark, just like the much of the densely populated part of the US lacks the terrain to build such storage. In order to be effective pumped hydro sites would have to be built in locations where a huge difference in height (600 m or more) between the lower and upper reservoirs is available within a short distance. Also, it doesn’t hurt if the site has options for refilling: building such storage in the middle of a desert is not the wisest of choices.

Besides finding the right location, building out the necessary amount of pumped hydro storage would also require millions of tons of steel and concrete to do. Both raw materials (iron and cement) necessitate the burning coal and natural gas to make, and diesel for delivering the building materials on site. And since these would be locations are far away from major population centers (up in the mountains) let’s not forget about all the long distance high voltage power lines, transformers etc. needed to make them work. Again, not something supported by a stagnating fossil fuel output and worsening economic conditions.

We have found ourselves in a civilizational conundrum, where stagnating (and ever more uneconomic) fossil fuel extraction has met the desire to “do something” about their emissions. The much touted “solution” — wind and solar — on the other hand, would necessitate an even greater investment into coal, oil and gas; in order to produce the prodigious amounts of raw materials needed to build these wonder-technologies. The same goes to nuclear, experimental fusion reactors and much needed electricity storage: all would require an endless supply of fossil fuels to make and maintain. Indefinitely — as many components involved cannot be recycled due to simple technological reasons.

The sooner we face the music, and accept that it was fossil fuels which have made industrial civilization possible, the sooner we can start adapting to their eventual depletion, and at least begin to mitigate the many harms their used caused to the planet. Pinning our hopes on unicorns such as “renewables” or “carbon capture and storage” only delays meaningful action, and accelerates the drawdown of the last remaining viable reserves of fossil fuels and minerals. Not a good idea, if you ask me.

Until next time,

B

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Notes:

(1) To be absolutely precise: epoxy goes through its own chemical hardening process (beyond its bondage to fiberglass), a one-way process which cannot be stopped or turned around at will.

(2) The same can be told about basically all of our technologies from electric vehicles to experimental fusion reactors. All contain parts made of unrecyclable materials, using unbreakable bonds — as well as metals requiring high heat to melt and recast — necessitating the continuation of mining, smelting and manufacturing… All fueled by fossil fuels, of course.

(3) Converting hydrogen back to electricity, on the other hand, is also wasteful (coming usually at 50% efficiency) leaving us with a mere 32% round trip efficiency (at best).

(4) Industrial civilization came about (and grew so big) because of the truly epic amounts of fossil fuels burned in the process. In 2023 alone, for example, humans burned 8.77 billion tonnes of coal. (And that’s just coal…) That was literally a mountain of coal 4 km wide and 2 km tall (or 13000 feet by 6500 feet) going up in smoke throughout ‘23. Burning all that giant heap released 49,789 Terawatts of heat, while global electricity generation was 29,479 Terawatts from all sources the same year. Generating 1kg of Hydrogen from water, on the other hand, takes 50 kW of electricity, while the same amount of hydrogen (if burned) releases 33 kW. Thus if we were using all electricity generated by mankind in 2023 to make H2, it would have resulted in the production of 589.58 million tons of hydrogen (besides a total blackout for the entire planet). Burning even that colossal amount of hydrogen, though, would have released 19,456 Terawatts of heat only, substituting a mere 39% of the heat released by coal, alone.

(5) The latest report from the Energy Institute titled Statistical Review of World Energy provides us with the numbers. By comparing “Renewable energy — Generation by source” (page 47) and “Renewable energy Solar — Installed photovoltaic (PV) power” (page 48) we can gain a candid insight into the real life capacity factor of photovoltaic panels. All we need to do is to divide the actual Terawatts supplied by “renewables” with the total (purely theoretical) nameplate capacity of said technologies.

(6) Solar’s share of electricity production was 7.5% in 2022 in the EU, while wind produced 15% of all the electric power in the block. Although these figures are just a half of what Hirth suggested as an economic limit, problems with continued investments in the sector have already began to transpire as both fossil fuel production and consumption hit their own limits to growth.