THE REAL COST OF RENEWABLES
Is "green" energy really environmentally friendly?
Three important considerations when establishing a society's energy infrastructure are affordabillity, reliability, and environmental performance.
When environmental concerns become all-ecompassing, people will suffer from intermittent and expensive energy. In a country such as Canada where winter temperatures plunge well below freezing, reliable energy is crucial for our survival. If we "decarbonize" our economy, we can expect to return to standards of living from at least 150 years ago.
To reduce emissions by 100% by 2050, this would amount to
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Phasing out almost all fossil fuels
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Electrifying heating and transportation
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Generating enough renewable electricity to meet demand and offset emissions
And the price tag? Canada's electricity rates are currently fairly reasonable compared to other countries in the EU that use significant amounts of renewables. We can see in the graph below that as the percentage of electricity generation from wind and solar increases, so does electricity costs. Ireland, for instance, pays a whooping 44 cents USD per kWh, and a significant fraction of their power (42.8%) comes from wind and solar.
Chart created with data from Our World in Data and World Population Review
Currently, Canada sits at an average of 12 cents USD per kWh with 9.4% of our electricity generated from wind and solar. If we implement these "green" strategies to increase our renewables, it is guaranteed that our electricity prices will skyrocket. Wind and solar are expensive, and even without the past evidence from other countriees, we can calculate these expenses based on the rare earth minerals required to create wind turbines and solar panels, in addition to the vast amounts of backup power or battery storage systems required when the sun doesn't shine or wind doesn't blow.
Solar and Wind Power
Solar and wind power are highly intermittent. Solar relies on the sun shining for long stretches of time, which is not at all feasible during long Canadian winters. Wind requires steady airflow without much disruption. The graphs below illustrate the monthly solar and wind capactiy contribution values, with percents indicating the amount of power that we can expect to be delivered compared to its rated capacity during peak periods. The low capacity values of both wind and solar illustrate just how inefficient these energy sources are. They are nowhere near what is required to reliably power our society.
Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) graphs for wind and solar capacity in Ontario from Jan 2025 - June 2026
Moreover, the materials required for solar and wind power technologies are unable to properly recycled. Turbine blades are made of fibreglass and cannot be recycled or repurposed, so end up in landfills. Most last only about 15 years, half their promised 30-year lifespan.
Photovoltaic solar panel waste has also grown in Canada and is expected to grow even greater, reaching up to 650,000 tonnes in 2050:
o 2020: 700 tonnes
o 2030: 13,000 tonnes
o 2040: 150,000 tonnes
o 2050: 650,000 tonnes
And worldwide, the International Renewable Eenergy Agency estimates that by 2050, there will be 78 million tonnes of solar panel waste. And with less than 10% of that recycled, this amounts to huge waste dumps with toxic chemicals that can leach into our groundwater, lakes, and rivers. Solar panels contain
Is this "green" energy?
The Hidden Materials
The materials required for wind and solar technologies are mined in some of the world’s poorest countries with minimal concerns for the health and safety of workers and the environment. The primary minerals used in renewable technologies are lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, graphite, and rare earth elements. Moreover, as explored in our 2022 report on the City of Ottawa’s Climate Change Master Plan, so-called green energy technologies use far more critical minerals than conventional energy technologies. This can be seen in the following graph from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
For instance, an offshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fired power plant. In order to obtain the key minerals for these technologies, we need to source them from China and other countries that have been in tension with the US. China controls over 70% of the world’s lithium, which is critical for lithium-ion batteries, and 85% of other rare earth minerals. The following graphs from the IEA illustrate this well:
With forced labour and poor environmental standards, we hardly want to increase our business with China. Lithium mining has extremely high water consumption, ecosystem degradation, and groundwater contamination. Many African, Asian, and South American children are enslaved in mines and factories to extract and process the rare-earths and exotic minerals required for these apparently clean technologies. For instance, the Uyghurs ethnic group in China have been forced into slave labour to produce and refine these materials, working long hours under appalling conditions.
‘Artisanal’ cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo now supplies two-thirds of the global output of the mineral. Many of the mines employ child labor, with up to 40,000 children estimated to be working in extremely dangerous conditions in the mines of Southern Katanga. In all, about 140,000 – 200,000 people are involved in the mining of cobalt in the Congo, working at less than $2 per day.
In many of these countries, they have been forced to use poorer quality energy resources as their fossil fuel use has been limited due to climate change policies. Almost 2 billion people around the world have no access to clean cooking fuels, forcing them to rely on wood, dried animal dung, or charcoal to cook. Due to increased wood use for energy, Africa is losing its forest, and this deforestation is having severe impacts on food production, wildlife, and sustainability for energy supply.
, the rare earth minerals (such as lithium, nickel, and cobalt) used in renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines and solar panels are mined in some of the world’s poorest countries. In their 2021 book “Clean” Energy Exploitations, Todd Royal and Ron Stein explain that, “green energy uses materials from some of the worst ecological and human rights offenders that exist on earth.” They go on to say that
All the mineral and metals needed to make wind turbines, solar panels, EV batteries, and battery energy storage systems for electrical grids are mined and processed in places like Baotou, Inner Mongolia, Bolivia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, mostly under Chinese control. All these areas have minimal to nonexistent labor, wage, environmental, reclamation, worker health, and safety regulations in place. The mere extraction of those exotic minerals and metals presents social challenges, human rights abuses, and environmental degradations worldwide.
In their 2021 book “Clean” Energy Exploitations, Todd Royal and Ron Stein explain that, “green energy uses materials from some of the worst ecological and human rights offenders that exist on earth.” They go on to say that
All the mineral and metals needed to make wind turbines, solar panels, EV batteries, and battery energy storage systems for electrical grids are mined and processed in places like Baotou, Inner Mongolia, Bolivia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, mostly under Chinese control. All these areas have minimal to nonexistent labor, wage, environmental, reclamation, worker health, and safety regulations in place. The mere extraction of those exotic minerals and metals presents social challenges, human rights abuses, and environmental degradations worldwide.
Many African, Asian, and South American children are enslaved in mines and factories to extract and process the rare-earths and exotic minerals required for apparently clean technologies. The Uyghurs ethnic group in China, for instance, have been forced into slave labour to produce and refine these materials under appalling conditions. Royal and Stein also add that, “Not only are working conditions hazardous, but living conditions are abysmal, with workers making such meager wages that they are forced to live in abject poverty.”
As another case in point, Royal and Stein write:
The world’s top producer of cobalt is the Democratic Republic of Congo, where some 40,000 children as young as four years of age toil with their parents for less than $2 a day up to 12 hours a day. Many die in cave-ins, or more slowly from constant exposure to toxic, radioactive mud, dust, water, and air that puts dangerous levels of cobalt, lead, uranium, and other heavy metals into their bodies. The cobalt ore is sent to China for processing by the Chinese-owned Congo Dongfang International Mining Company.
In many of these countries, people have also been forced to use poorer quality energy resources with fossil fuel use limited due to climate change policies. Almost 2 billion people have no access to clean cooking fuels, forcing them to rely on wood, dried animal dung, or charcoal to cook. They cannot thrive on the so-called renewable power that is being promoted: they need conventional oil, coal, or natural gas to truly bring them out of poverty.
