this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Good move, but 2030 looks so far in today's world. As for wind generator blades - decomposable composites are here already, but not yet widespread, and probably still far from optimal.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Most wind trubines and solar panels have a designed lifespan of 25 years. They can last longer, but they do need maintanence at that point. So 2030 would cover everything built since 2005, which is basicly everything in China.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

If you look at the quantity of waste assuming it's all landfill except the turbine nacelle (which is more than valuable enough to scrap), it's vanishingly small compared to any other option (yes, nuclear too if you don't pretend spent fuel is the only type of waste it is possible to create).

It's also generated almost exclusively on the upstream side of a few materials (silver, neodymium etc) that are being phased out.

Circular economies are great and should be high priority (due to those upstream harms), but from the propaganda you'd think that 400kg downstream of glass or fiberglass and resin (and dozen or so kg of other metals) over an entire lifetime per person in the global north was a world-ending catastrophe.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

China wont have any real issue until 2030, because most of the energy is generated by Coal Power.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They have a higher wind and solar share than the US, the growth rate is more than double Europe, and the absolute total is growing faster than both combined.

No significant solar installation is older than about 20 years though (and most wind is also new) so 2030 still leaves plenty of time before there's much of anything to recycle.