If You Love "Green" Energy, You Have to Love Mining the Planet

Wind and solar farms don't just appear on beautiful landscapes and off our coasts on their own

Wind and solar energy getting classified as “green” or “renewable” energy is a misnomer. There isn’t one form of energy that doesn’t have negative effects on the environment. Climate activists portray these sources as the only acceptable alternative to fossil fuels because they don’t think they have any negative consequences. As American economist and philosopher Thomas Sowell said, “There are no solutions. There are only tradeoffs.”

How much do the proponents of these forms of energy know about the materials and methods needed to construct them? What is called green energy requires massive amounts of mining to extract critical minerals for this technology such as copper, cobalt, nickel, lithium, REEs (Rare Earth Elements), chromium, zinc, PGMs (Platinum Group Metals), and aluminum. Mining has never been associated with “green,” “renewable,” or environmentally friendly, so why does it get a free pass with wind and solar energy?

There isn’t one form of energy that doesn’t have negative effects on the environment.

No energy system is “renewable” since technology requires the continual mining and processing of millions of tons of primary materials. Anti-fossil fuel proponents who support wind and solar say we will run out of oil and need to transition. Have they thought about running out of critical minerals needed for wind and solar energy, issues accessing them, or the ethics of how and where they get sourced?

Lithium is critical to batteries and energy storage for wind and solar energy. It’s one of the minerals with the highest demand. Traditional mining of lithium can lead to habitat destruction, soil erosion, and groundwater contamination. The evaporation pond method used in South America's lithium-rich regions uses vast amounts of water which disrupts local ecosystems and exacerbates water scarcity.

REE mining generates large quantities of toxic waste, radioactive tailings, pollutes soil, and harms water sources and air quality. Extraction involves crushing rock formations containing rare earth ores and subjecting them to chemical treatments to separate the desired minerals. The process is energy intensive which contributes to greenhouse gases that climate activists want to eliminate.

It’s hard to comprehend the number of materials we have to mine to create more wind and solar energy. One wind turbine requires 335 tons of steel, 4.7 tons of copper, 3 tons of aluminum, 2 tons of rare earths, and 1,200 tons of concrete. A solar panel requires 70% glass, 10% polymer, 7% aluminum, 4% silicon, and 1% copper. Try to imagine the amount of materials we need to create that wind or solar farms with those statistics.

Mining has never been associated with “green,” “renewable,” or environmentally friendly, so why does it get a free pass with wind and solar energy?

America has abdicated its responsibility for extracting these critical minerals to countries that aren’t allies and have much less stringent environmental standards than we have. China is the biggest player with rare earth elements and the Democratic Republic of the Congo has the most cobalt with working conditions reflecting modern-day slavery and child labor. Russia is in second place for production. China also controls the largest shares of lithium and copper.

In 2020, America was 100% import-reliant on 17 key minerals and 50% import-reliant on 29 more key minerals. This is a failure of American policy because in 1990 we were the world’s top producer of minerals and now we are ranked 7th with untapped reserves worth trillions of dollars. In February, American Rare Earth’s Inc. discovered what they call the “mother lode” in Wyoming to answer China’s lock on the market. The potential is there if our government doesn’t mess it up with arduous permitting and endless red tape.

Climate activists want what they think are the benefits of wind and solar without doing the dirty work in America so we appear friendly to the planet. They do the same thing with oil where it is ok for Venezuela and the Middle East to drill, but not us. It’s not realistic for activists, left-wing politicians, and government bureaucrats to all of a sudden greenlight massive mining projects that will have negative impacts on the environment. They have a choice to make if the dirty tradeoffs are worth it for what they think is green energy.