Valk, Steve. “Are Clean Technologies and Renewable Energies Better for the Environment than Fossil Fuels?” Citizens’ Climate Lobby, 15 Dec. 2022, https://citizensclimatelobby.org/blog/blog/are-clean-technologies-and-renewable-energies-better-for-the-environment-than-fossil-fuels/. 

This article addresses some of the major concerns of clean energy and why it is better than fossil fuels. The first point is that it requires much less drilling than fossil fuels. While roughly 8 billion tons of fossil fuels needed to be mined each year, the transition to clean energy estimates only 3.5 billion tons for 3 decades. Additionally, most of the metal that is used to make these renewable sources of energy, like wind turbines, can be recycled. There are also many health effects that would not be a risk with renewable energy, like air pollution. The next concern they addressed was the amount of space it would require for wind turbines. Because wind turbines are very spread apart, they can give the appearance that they take up a lot of space, however, the land in between turbines can be used for farming and animal grazing. Another concern was the harmful process by which lithium is mined. Two ways to go around this are either to extract it from geothermal plants or use sodium-ion batteries. The final concern they address is regarding the human rights violations of lithium mining. A lot of lithium used is mined in the Republic of Congo and a lack of regulations has made it very dangerous for people to mine there. The writer suggests that corporations seek to purchase these metals from nations with good human rights to discourage those without them. 

 

I appreciated that the writer took the time to address many of the relevant fears that are holding people back from switching to clean sources of energy. The data was very informative and gave a solution or alternative in all the cases where there were negatives about clean energy. However, I really liked their point about having to have lithium come from a place with good human rights. Is it truly clean energy if people are being harmed in the making of it? This brings up the issues of exploitation and danger in the production of energy that is rarely talked about. Not only as citizens do we have the role to make sure that we are incorporating renewable sources of energy with minimal harm to the environment, but corporations need to make sure that they are supporting businesses that harvest their minerals humanely.