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Comment by simgt | Hacker News Reader

It does matter because for now renewables are manufactured mostly with coal and oil

EDIT: I'm not a renewable skeptic, answers bellow

All of the cradle-to-grave studies I've seen about greenhouse gas emissions for renewables versus coal/oil still indicate massive improvements.

This government meta study of 3,000 such studies puts PV solar at roughly 20x less emissions than coal.

https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/80580.pdf

Yes, but you're missing the point, I'm not debating that. Renewables aren't free, we should care about consumption just as much as production, and we don't know (yet) how to sustain the current consumption with renewables only, that includes being able to manufacture renewables.

That's fair and fwiw something I'm in firm agreement with you, but also just not what I took from your comment.

This doesn’t matter that much. Solar and batteries will last for decades with minimal maintenance and no input.

Any kind of fossil fuel generation means constantly going out and digging up new oil sources, shipping them around the world, and then burning them. So you invest a lot of time & money into something that disappears immediately and also heats up the environment.

Meanwhile, a solar panel just sits there for decades passively making energy with very few externalities.

Not to mention, recycling solar panels & batteries is getting cheaper & more effective by the day. The metal (and even oil!) you dug out of the ground to build them didn’t get burned up; a lot of it is still usable.

Imagine if all the vehicles that run of fossil fules is converted into EV. What are the incentives in place to properly recycle the batteries? Does a new battery technology go into production before the technology to recycle it is production grade/economically viable? What happens when we are getting like a million EV batteries, globally per day, to dispose off? What happens when these batteries use vastly different chemical composition (because they are from various stages of battery evolution) and need vastly different methods to process? What happens when these things pile up and poison the land? dumped in ocean or rivers? burned up releasing god-knows-what into air?

How long before the regulation (often times toothless) kicks in to handle these things?

I am all for getting rid of pollution, but there should be some caution in rushing onto new things, which is exactly what got us into this mess in the first place.

“Caution” does nothing except ensure we keep spewing more co2 for longer and cooking the planet. There is no practical alternative to EVs. So let’s go all in as fast as possible please

There is no practical alternative to air, water and earth as well...So let us please consider the possibility of pollution of those that could be caused by a global dumping of EV batteries

It depends on what you mean by EVs really. There is an alternative to big electric individual cars, we've been building for 70 years car-centric urban areas for big vehicles doing 30km+ of commute every day. Good luck with a hellscape like Dallas but electrifying Utrech or Tokyo will scale to 9B people just fine.

The alternative is rebuilding 100 years of urban areas? For unimaginable trillions of $, and monumental construction emissions? Nah I’ll take EVs please

Not rebuilding, but at least not building more of it. But this exact mindset is why the US can't be helped and will be the last one to go low on carbon. The whole culture is built exclusively on unlimited space and resources.

Suburbia is much younger than a 100 years btw: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y_SXXTBypIg&list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_...

Everything you wrote is plain obvious to anyone who looked into the topic. But come on, we don't have to change anything about our consumption because we'll eventually reach some solar punk utopia? That's the comment I was replying to.

Nothing for now tells us we can power our current needs with renewables only, however we know we can drive around in much lighter vehicles, fly much less, eat more local, buy less clothes, use compute for less stupid things in data centers.

Bateries last about 15 years.

https://powerlinkenergy.com/news/expected-lifespan-of-batter...

Solar panels last for decades, solar inverter shorter.

"Generally, the average solar inverter lifespan is 10 to 15 years for standard string inverters, and 20 to 25 years for microinverters"

https://www.solaxpower.com/blogs/how-long-do-solar-inverters...

There is lot of hype around battery recycling, like claims: EV batteries are now more than 99% recyclable

https://electrek.co/2025/10/28/forget-the-myths-ev-batteries...

The information from scientific literature is much more realistic.

"All the current recycling methods of lithium-ion batteries have advantages and disadvantages concerning environmental impact, efficiency, and economic viability. However, a significant gap exists between academic research and industrial application. Researchers, policymakers, manufacturers, and recyclers should focus on greener methods with high recovery rates, low emissions, and minimal waste towards zero emissions. "

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037877532...

They're manufactured once and then generate way more energy than was used to make them.

Of course, but pretending consumption doesn't matter in that situation is just silly

Which is a tiny CO2 spend compared to the benefit, unless you dishonestly factor in manufacturing energy costs as coming from oil.

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