Does waste from clean energy outweigh its benefits?

Skeptics of the clean energy transition often raise familiar objections: Don’t solar panels and wind turbines create massive waste? And aren’t local climate efforts futile if China’s emissions keep rising? Sometimes these doubts also surface among climate-conscious audiences who may not have the full data.

Hannah Ritchie, a data scientist at the UK-based Our World in Data, which compiles and presents global datasets on major issues, spoke to Canadian media to address those concerns.

"There is this feeling that, in order to tackle climate change, we’ll be creating huge numbers of other massive problems," Ritchie said.

In her new book, Clearing the Air: A Hopeful Guide to Solving Climate Change in 50 Questions and Answers, Ritchie uses data to put such fears into perspective.

When solar panels and wind turbine blades reach the end of their lifespan, they do become waste if they are not recycled.

"You'll often get, on social media, some picture of wind turbines dumped in a field or solar panels maybe dumped somewhere," Ritchie said.

Those images have fueled concerns that a boom in renewable energy will inevitably mean a surge in renewable waste. But, Ritchie argues, the scale of the problem looks very different when compared to fossil fuels.

Burning coal, for example, produces coal ash as a byproduct. Based on available data, Ritchie shows that coal generates 50 times more waste than solar power — and 500 times more than wind.

Coal ash is also highly toxic. In the United States, some power plants dispose of it in surface ponds or landfills, or discharge it into waterways.

By contrast, much of the waste from renewable technologies can potentially be recycled. Most components of solar panels are recyclable, though that requires countries to invest in effective recycling systems.

Another common argument is that individual actions — or even national efforts by smaller countries — are meaningless unless China, the world’s largest emitter, makes significant changes. Ritchie says recent trends offer reason for cautious optimism.

"China has been going extremely quickly on deployment of clean power, the rollout of electric vehicles," Ritchie said.

She notes that China’s investment in green technologies, helped by falling production costs, is also having global ripple effects.

"Over the past year, you’ve actually seen a huge boom in the imports of solar panels in Pakistan," said Ritchie.

She adds that in Brazil, sub-Saharan Africa and across much of the Global South, demand for affordable, clean electricity is growing, and electrification is accelerating.

Importantly, China’s emissions have recently plateaued, and there are indications they could begin to decline.

"Because it's the world's largest emitter," she said, "it would likely be the case that if China's emissions dropped, global emissions would also drop."

For Ritchie, one of the biggest risks is public discouragement — the belief that there are no good options available.

Electrification, she argues, brings benefits that are often overlooked.

"Driving an electric car uses about a third of the energy of driving a petrol or diesel one," said Ritchie.

In electric vehicles, most of the battery’s energy goes directly into moving the car. In gasoline-powered cars, only about 20 per cent of the energy is converted into motion, with the rest lost as heat. Similarly, renewable energy plants tend to be far more efficient than fossil fuel facilities.

"You have these huge efficiency benefits where you can also get cost benefits," she said.

In practical terms, that could mean significant savings. From transportation to heating and cooling, "we could have exactly the amount of energy services that we have now or more — but using a fraction of the energy," she highlights.

By Nazrin Sadigova