Renewable energy has drawbacks and environmental consequences

Renewable energy sources — wind, wave, solar, and the like — are generally the preferred energy sources of environmentalists. At the same time, there is no way to produce energy without some sort of environmental impact, and the more people you need energy for the greater the impact will be.

Some examples of environmental impacts from renewable energy:

• Mesmerised brown crabs ‘attracted to’ undersea cables
• How do tides and turbines affect sealife? Fundy study hopes to find out

Nonetheless, unintended side effects of renewable energy sometimes lead environmentalists to oppose it. In my view, they are missing how every energy source will have drawbacks and the question is how they relate to the drawbacks from alternatives, chiefly fossil fuels. Environmentalists can be too easily inclined to become perpetual and reflexive critics, always emphasizing the problems with any course of action and effectively acting as a blockage to any action.

Related:

Renewable energy options:

• The efficiency of solar
• Energy from the oceans
• Solar panels at 30 metres a minute
• Quantity of solar energy
• Google and geothermal in Canada
• Geothermal in Alberta
• Big potential for offshore wind
• Ways to generate electricity
• Grouse Mountain’s 1.5MW wind turbine
• The Desertec solar plan
• Possible doctoral topic: can renewables power the world?
• Open thread: the cost of renewable energy
• New big dams in Canada

Environmentalist / NIMBY opposition to renewable projects:

• Renewables, land, and trade-offs
• Artificial geothermal and earthquakes
• Rejecting solar in California
• The climate movement and “100% renewables”
• Keystone XL uncertainty and the environmental movement’s proficiency at saying no
• Open thread: British Columbia’s Site C Peace River dam
• Saying no to climate solutions
• Reading about the resistance dilemma

Energy storage:

• Compressed air for mobile energy storage
• Pumped hydroelectric storage in Wales
• Pumped and multi-lagoon tidal systems
• Proposed pumped hydroelectric storage in Australia
• Batteries for large-scale energy storage
• Open thread: energy storage

Transmission and grid interlinkage:

• KombiKraftwerk
• HVDC transmission for renewable energy
• Tomorrow’s electrical generation: distributed or concentrated?
• Grid technologies to support renewable power
• Rail electrification and power transmission
• A pan-European electricity grid

Demand shaping:

• Peak power, storage, and renewables
• Managing peak power demand
• Smart grid skepticism

Politics of renewables:

• Google’s commitment to renewables
• The only question on renewables is when
• Canada’s new 90% target for non-GHG emitting electricity
• Increasing renewable capacity is much harder than increasing energy consumption
• A renewable energy plan for the UK
• Renewables in Germany
• How not to use feed-in tariffs
• Renewable energy and the budget
• Responding to Kenneth Green on renewable energy

Author: Milan

In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. Between 2005 and 2007 I completed an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford. I worked for five years for the Canadian federal government, including completing the Accelerated Economist Training Program, and then completed a PhD in Political Science at the University of Toronto in 2023. View all posts by Milan