Dozens of reasons why solar power can’t replace fossil fuels
Preface. All solar (and wind) do is add to the giant bonfire of burning fossil fuels — which still provide two-thirds of the power for the electric grid. Electricity is just a fraction of how we use energy, over 80% is fossil fueled because electricity can’t replace their use in fertilizer, transportation, half a million products made out of fossil fuels (i.e. plastic) and so on. Without natural gas, the electric grid won’t be able to stay up since there are no other options for storage that scale up. All of this explained at great length in my books.
When you hear things like “solar power provided 100% of California’s power today”, no it didn’t. For a few hours it provided 100% of ELECTRIC power, and the money lost by all the other power providers that had to shut down, the ones that actually assure reliability to the grid since solar and wind are extremely unreliable and seasonal, means that they have to spend less to maintain their facilities, shortening their lifespan, especially coal and nuclear which take many hours to ramp up or down.
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Solar power contraptions require oil for every single step of their life cycle
Look at all the fossil energy used to make solar panels in this youtube video: How It’s Made Solar Panels
If solar power and concentrated solar power plants can’t produce enough power to replicate themselves entirely over their life cycle, plus produce the energy needed by society, then they are not sustainable. Every single step of their life cycle depends on fossil fuels, from diesel mining trucks, diesel ships to take the ore to facilities that use fossil fuels to crush the rock, coal blast and smelting furnaces, transportation of the myriad parts from all over the globe to the manufacturing facility, and finally delivered to the final site, where workers arrive in gas-burning vehicles over petroleum asphalt roads.
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