Most countries depend on fossil fuels such as coal and oil for their energy needs which are major sources for climate change and air pollution. Air pollution impacts us daily. Air pollution caused by fossil fuels causes over 13 million people to die annually (Osman, 2023). In addition from a financial aspect, “air pollution from fossil fuels caused daily health and economic losses of approximately $8 billion” in 2018 (Osman, 2023). It is obvious that the world needs cleaner energy, and currently renewables are considered the cleaner choice.

There are four major renewable energy sources: wind, biomass, solar, and hydropower (see figure 1). The United States has moved toward these renewable sources for our energy needs. From 2019 to 2020, the use of fossil fuels in the U.S. significantly dropped, and renewable energy has steadily risen in the past ten years (see figure 2). At first glance, “renewable energy sources are considered to be affordable, sustainable, and free-obtained energy” (Osman, 2023). However, a deeper dive into the data shows that these renewable energy sources are not always better for the environment and have massive price tags of initial costs.

Figure 1: Renewable Energy Types (Ang, 2022).

Figure 2. Comparison of (a) fossil fuel generation and (b) renewable generation growth (Ang, 2022).

Turbines are considered to be clean energy that harvests the wind created naturally by the environment. According to “A comprehensive study of renewable energy sources: Classifications, challenges and suggestions,” wind energy is the second major renewable after hydropower. To harvest the wind, turbines are made to be complex devices. Behind the basic blades and structure of the turbine, there is a lot of complex technology (see figure 3). This technology requires a mass amount of oil to have smooth gears, hydraulic fluid, and lubrication. Similar to a car engine, the oil is used on the brakes, in gear boxes, and the transformers. 

Wind turbines are an expensive investment. According to Weather Guard Wind, a company that distributes wind turbines, the initial cost of an average size commercial wind turbine is between 2.6 and 4 million dollars. 

Wind turbines would not produce enough energy without building a significant amount of them. Based on a standard capacity factor of 42%, the average turbine generates over 843,000 kWh per month. To give some context, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, “The average U.S. household consumes about 10,500 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity per year.” Considering the amount of energy one home uses and how much energy a turbine creates in a month, it is clear to see there would need to be a mass amount of turbines to cover the demand. 

Also, there are many undeniable environmental impacts that turbines have. According to Clean Energy Ideas, all renewables have geographic limitations that exist. Throughout the United States, there are multitudes of conditions and environments. While the variety is amazing, it has negative impacts on the use of renewables due to weather conditions. Renewables, especially the wind turbines, are most effective when they are in consistent levels of wind. Conditions such as these are only found across a few places in America. This reduces the amount of land that can truly work to implement turbines into the market of energy. Rough weather such as hot sun for solar, wind for turbines, and flowing water for dams is amazing for their production, but it takes a toll on their life span. LAIIR states, “the problem is that over time after constant stress, wind turbines are bound to experience damage such as cracking, pitting, and seal breakages…” The maintenance required for turbines takes time and money to resolve. The conditions that these turbines live in make maintenance much harder and expensive. Breakage and leaks are difficult to find, yet this machinery is put in some of the most fragile parts of our environment which ultimately makes turbines dangerous to our country and the environment. 

Another environmental problem that is found in these turbines is the disturbance of bird populations and migration. The turbines are not a part of the natural environment that these birds are used to meaning they don’t understand the dangers. Migrating and native birds often fly through the spinning blades of the turbines leading to a multitude of deaths. American Bird Conservancy shows us that “Wind turbines do kill birds — anywhere from 700 to 1 million annually in the U.S. alone…” This amount of birds dying each year can significantly impact ecosystems and species. With the amount of land we already use, it is hard enough for species to survive. The addition of turbines can send mortality spikes in many species that are crucial to controlling the health of environments. 

Figure 3. Horizontal Wind Turbine System Configuration (Ang, 2022).

Figure 4. Wind turbine with damage from constant use (LAIIER).

Being able to look at the true effectiveness of wind turbines, it is easy to see that this form of energy is nothing the market can rely on. The energy produced is so finite compared to the energy consumed in daily lives in America. The pure amount of land and ocean space that is needed to power the United States with the power of the wind is unfeasible. Also, our environment is not safer with turbines as they still present danger to the species around them by using space and land. Although these are called renewables, a lot of behind the scenes construction shows that wind powered turbines are not yet the solutions we need. 

Hydropower

Another important renewable energy source in the market are hydropower or dams, which are giant concrete structures that can withstand heavy amounts of weight carried by the river or stream. “By blocking water, dams can store water for irrigation, control floods, and generate hydroelectric power. In short, a dam manages how much water moves downstream—and when” (Trap Bag). With this, dams can be used for many reasons by the public and the market. This includes creating reservoirs for drinking water, agriculture, or industrial use, protecting communities by holding back excess water during storms and releasing it gradually, converting water flow into renewable energy, and forming artificial lakes used for boating or fishing.

Figure 5. An image of a dam (Dam Break Analysis).

With all of these positive externalities, dams hold a clear sense of purpose in society and communities. The Bulletin even states that dams “already supply about 16 percent of the world’s electricity, far more than all other renewable sources combined.” Dams are known to be the most productive renewable energy source because they are consistent. In other words, the sun can stop shining when the clouds are out, the wind can die down during different weather fronts, but the river never stops flowing. This consistency leads to its pure domination over the other renewables. Although dams are amazingly consistent in comparison, they do not escape the wear and tear that most renewables endure. The constant flow of the river applies an immense amount of pressure on the dams. Over the years, everything solid can erode from the flow of water. Due to this erosion, The Bulletin predicts that “even dams are typically designed to last only about 50 years.” To create and maintain a structure like this can be daunting to a budget or investment. The concrete and technology that is in dams allowing them to harness the flow of water is no cheap endeavor. According to “Cost, environmental impact, and resilience of renewable energy under a changing climate: a review,” the cost of building a hydroplant is the highest of all renewable energy sources. Also, the work is no simple task as the water always remains flowing and to work on something with the sheer size of a dam is never easy. An added expense is that dams are usually built in remote areas which are hard to transfer or move energy from one area to next. Usually to transfer this huge amount of energy some land and resources have to be destroyed to allow this energy to be used. The creation of this transfer path costs land and money although the dams do create a significant amount of energy in return. 

Dams also impact the environment in significant ways. The diversion and trapping of water changes ecosystems up and down stream drastically. The up-stream will overflow and pool up whilst the down-stream will be massively undersupplied. Wildlife, including plants andanimals, will be forced to adapt to things they cannot, leading to some species dying off. This event is comparable to the hunting of buffalo by the indigenous peoples. Before the colonization of the Americans, the Indigenous people were able to follow the herd and maintain the herd as the wildlife does to the rivers. When the colonial Americans slaughtered the buffalo herds, the Indigenous people were left with nothing to harvest, and the buffalos were nearly wiped out. This is what happens in an ecosystem when a dam is introduced. The water that used to supply all of the species that live in accordance to the river can now only supply a limited number. Meaning a few dominant species are going to survive and most will die off due to lack of water and nutrients that they had before. On the other side of the dam, the water will experience a change in its quality. This is due to the dam trapping the sediment. American Rivers sums this up as “slow-moving or still reservoirs can heat up, resulting in abnormal temperature fluctuations which can affect sensitive species. This can lead to algal blooms and decreased oxygen levels. Other dams decrease temperatures by releasing cooled, oxygen-deprived water from the reservoir bottom.” Species can drastically change over time but the introduction of something so significant does not allow for any species to adapt. This is why there are unhealthy ecosystems around most dams in the world. 

Multiple species also struggle with the dams due to the restriction of traveling up stream. Taking away the ability to travel as far up the stream as possible makes the species less likely to reproduce or survive. Species that depend on this could die out over time which would affect the ecosystem as a whole because there would be less prey to be hunted. Leading to lower numbers across the board of all species. 

Figure 6. “The impoundment of the Bloede Dam on Maryland’s Patapsco River blocks a rocky cascade” (American Rivers, 2016)

Dams are the most efficient renewable energy source but are they technically renewable? There is a massive sacrifice of environmental change and depletion because of these dams. In fact, dams have the most impact on ecosystems. All the common necessities that wildlife need are impacted such as, the amount of water, the temperature, the quality, the nutrients, and the space. Dams also require major investments in the creation and maintenance of its technology. These dams also disturb the migration of fish upstream which can ultimately ruin populations and species. These reasons make dams unfeasible for the future health of our country even though they are amazing for the energy market. 

Solar Panels

Solar energy is a new technology that can be used for homes, businesses, and personal use. “Solar technologies convert sunlight into electrical energy either through photovoltaic (PV) panels or through mirrors that concentrate solar radiation. This energy can be used to generate electricity or be stored in batteries or thermal storage” (U.S. Department of Energy, How Does Solar Work, 2025). Solar panels use photovoltaic cells (PV) in the panel to absorb the sun’s energy and eventually turn it into usable power. These solar panels are the most popular for family homes because they can produce just enough energy to power a home. On a larger scale, to maximize efficiency, concentrating solar-thermal power systems (CSP) use mirrors to “reflect and concentrate sunlight.” Then receivers collect the energy and convert it to heat. The CSP systems are used mostly in power plants (U.S. Department of Energy, How Does Solar Work, 2025). 

The main semiconductor in solar cells (PV) is silicon. In fact, 95% of solar panels use monocrystalline silicon or polycrystalline silicon as semiconductor (Solar Energy Technologies Office, 2019). Silicon is abundant but has to be refined to be used in each cell. The blocks of crystalline silicon are cut into thin “wafers” in order to be used in the cell. “To make a silicon solar cell, blocks of crystalline silicon are cut into very thin wafers. The wafer is processed on both sides to separate the electrical charges and form a diode, a device that allows current to flow in only one direction. The diode is sandwiched between metal contacts to let the electrical current easily flow out of the cell” (Solar Energy Technologies Office, 2019).The range of expenses of solar energy varies based on the type of panels. Home panels tend to be far less than that of panels made to power an industry or parts of the market. The bigger panels also require more work due to the large bases needed to hold them up. As technology advances “the amount of money you can save with solar depends upon how much electricity you consume, the size of your solar energy system, if you choose to buy or lease your system, and how much power it is able to generate given the direction your roof faces and how much sunlight hits it. Your savings also depend on the electricity rates set by your utility and how much the utility will compensate you for the excess solar energy you send back to the grid” (U.S. Department of Energy, Homeowner’s Guide, 2021). Solar panels residentially are an investment. In other words, the home owner is paying an initial fee for the installment and maintenance in the hope that the value of the energy produced will eventually be beneficial. A real life example is, according to Belmont Solar, a company that installs solar panels in PA, “The average cost of a residential solar panel system in the state is $15,250. The average solar panel cost in Pennsylvania is $3.05/watt. The average payback period is eleven years.” Usually homeowners will pay the electric bill for the amount of power they used that month. Solar allows for another possibility that acts more like an investment. 

The efficiency of solar energy depends on three factors that limit the solar panels’ ability to convert sunlight into electricity. One factor that determines the amount of energy created is the wavelength from the sun. “When light strikes the surface of a solar cell, some photons are reflected, while others pass right through. Some of the absorbed photons have their energy turned into heat. The remainder have the right amount of energy to separate electrons from their atomic bonds to produce charge carriers and electric current” (Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, 2019). Another factor to the reduction of efficiency is temperature. In the hot months of the year when the sun is closest to panels the increase in solar waves can be too much for the panels sometimes. A lot of the waves can be turned into heat rather than used as energy and more waves get reflected as well. Which is why efficiency is better in the cooler months when the sun rays are not so dramatic. The panels can use all of the waves to gather the most amount of energy. Reflection is the last factor in the decreased efficiency of panels. The reflected photons do not get absorbed and transferred into usable energy. These photons bounce right back off the panel into the atmosphere which is bad for production efficiency. However, efficiency can be increased with newer technology by limiting the amount of sunlight reflected away from the solar cell. Without anti-reflection coatings, untreated solar cells reflect more than 30% of “incident” light (Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, 2019). Efficiency is definitely a factor to consider when planning to use solar energy. 

There are multiple environmental impacts that solar energy can have in both residential and market style panels. In a residential setting, panels are often thrown away due to inefficiency, the panels breaking, and new models being introduced. There are always increased incentives to replace solar panels for newer more effective panels which spikes the number of panels that need to be discarded. Discarding panels is difficult due to their size and unique materials they contain. These panels will easily and rapidly fill the landfills because there are few recycling options other than that (see figure 9). They are also expensive waste. “With the current capacity, it costs an estimated $20–$30 to recycle one panel. Sending that same panel to a landfill would cost a mere $1–$2” (Atasu, 2021). Landfills are the cheaper alternative but the lesser of the environmentally friendly options. Market style panels have this issue as well given that they are much larger and still have the unique materials in them. Although market style panels have more of an impact in the land use because the amount of panels needed to run a high electricity demand area cannot just be put on roofs. In fact, there would need to be hundreds of thousands of acres of land to fulfill this demand. The two main environmental issues of these panels is that they are hard to discard and take a lot of space. “The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)’s official projections assert that ‘large amounts of annual waste are anticipated by the early 2030s’ and could total 78 million tonnes by the year 2050” (Atasu, 2021). This waste can be detrimental to our landfills and ultimately have a negative impact on our environment as a whole. 

Figure 7. The yellow square shows the 21,000 square miles or 13,600,000 acres it would take to power the United States for a singular year (Nussey, 2018).

Figure 8. The Dau Tieng Photovoltaic Solar Power Project in Vietnam is the biggest solar project in Southeast Asia today (McGovern, 2024).

Figure 9. Many solar panels are dumped and put in landfills (McGovern, 2024)

Solar panels are a major controversy in the energy market because they are the face of renewables. Yet, they are not so environmentally friendly as they are advertised to be. They cause build ups in the landfill and take a great amount of habitats to be used in the industrialized market. This cannot be tolerated when the panels themselves are not powerful enough to suit the energy demand society has today. While it is difficult to argue the investments made by home owners to power their home via solar. It becomes way easier to argue against the use of panels in the markets. The initial investment of money, time, labor, materials, and land can never be restored by the production the panels provide. The panels cause expenses in many aspects of the market which ultimately decreases their efficiency as a total. It is almost impossible to believe that panels can power the future of this country. 

Investment

The common argument for renewable energy usually focuses around investment. One argument would be that the cost of renewable energy is less than the costs of our current energy system. In the article 6 Arguments Against Renewable Energy, it uses this data table (see figure 10).

Figure 10. “the utility-scale power generation costs for various technologies for the US” (6 Arguments, 2022).

One Energy claims that this data is enough to disclose the theory that our current energy system costs less than that of renewables. According to this data, our current energy system costs roughly $226/MWh while the renewable energies only cost $149. A clear savings. 

However, this data does not take into account the storage, the movement, and the investment side of renewable energy. An investment is when you are giving an initial fee in the hope that it will pay back over time. While this energy is cheaper, it does not give a strong incentive of paying back the initial investments that is predicted to be a 5.5 trillion dollar investment. It is found that “to achieve 100 percent renewable energy over the next 10 years, the analysis finds that there would first have to be a massive buildout of wind and solar capacity, costing $1.5 trillion. Next, the U.S. would need to add 900 gigawatts of battery storage, raising the price tag to $4 trillion. Lastly, the U.S. would need to double its transmission lines — from 200,000 miles today to 400,000 miles — to handle the new distributed power system, costing another $700 billion” (Yale University, 2019). All of the added investments that the renewables require will never pay back the initial expense. Whereas the current energy system is a pay for what you use policy. In the grand scheme, all of the added cost outweighs the benefits of solar power and renewable energy. 

Feasibility 

Are renewables feasible “​​Given the U.S. consumes about 4 petawatt hours of electricity per year, we’d need about 13,600,000 acres or 21,250 square miles of solar panels to meet the total electricity requirements of the United States for a year” (Nussey, 2018). This seems minimal compared to the US entirety but take into account the specialization of these renewable energy sources. Most can only be applied to certain areas due to consistency of the conditions and to maximize effectiveness. Also including the cities, communities, highways, roadways, parks, preserves, then we are forced down to small sectors of land not nearly big enough to fit the energy demands we have. Not to mention the difficulty of accounting for the energy demands that the US is predicted to have. The USA studied by “[T]he International Energy Agency (I.E.A.) projects global energy demand will rise more than 25 percent by 2040, driven by population growth and rising incomes” (The Editors of ProCon, 2000). With this prediction, the US will have to account for the energy needs of 25 percent more people than it already has. The added stress on the project to produce more especially when it is already struggling to meet the demands today is not feasible. The government would have to buy private land from citizens to expand their projects which would ultimately increase the budget of the project. 

In the minds of the majority of Americans, renewable energy sources seem feasible for the market, “but meeting the world’s total energy demands in 2030 with renewable energy alone would take an estimated 3.8 million wind turbines (each with twice the capacity of today’s largest machines), 720,000 wave devices, 5,350 geothermal plants, 900 hydroelectric plants, 490,000 tidal turbines, 1.7 billion rooftop photovoltaic systems, 40,000 solar photovoltaic plants, and 49,000 concentrated solar power systems” (Stover, 2011). Taking this into perspective, the United States is the third most populous country and uses 16 percent of world energy demand. When accounting for the population growth in the near future, nearly twenty percent of these numbers given by Stover would have to be installed in America. When looking internally, Americans should realize this is not a realistic and genuine replacement for our energy difficulties. A counter argument to this would be that “Europe is way ahead in the renewable energy scene with countries like Denmark setting an ambitious target of replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy completely by 2035. Australia is another pioneer in the renewable energy sector, has proved conclusively that renewable energy plants are capable of handling the energy demands of industries”(Stover, 2011). Although it is true that other countries are making this a reality, it is still not feasible for the US, sitting at 340.1 million people, which is just shy of four times the population of all three of these countries combined. Meaning the United State’s energy demands are far beyond that of other countries that may not be as developed and populous. Therefore, the use of renewables in the market is not yet reliable because it does not produce a consistent or enough energy to power the demand of the constantly growing United States.

Conclusion

Renewable energy sources create energy in a clean and healthy way, however, there is a sacrifice and risk of land, money, and reliability. Although when used personally, renewables have amazing benefits, we cannot rely on them in the constantly growing market we have today. When dealing with wind turbines, there is a sacrifice of efficiency and space which can be detrimental to the environment. Along with dams that are like a wrecking ball to the environment they thrive in. Finally the solar panels will cause havoc in multiple aspects of the market and the habitats that this world needs dearly. So, “Unless you’re planning to live without electricity and motorized transportation, you need more than just wind, water, sunlight, and plants for energy. You need raw materials, real estate, and other things that will run out one day. You need stuff that has to be mined, drilled, transported, and bulldozed — not simply harvested or farmed. You need non-renewable resources” (Stover, 2011).

Figure 11. Summary of the disadvantages of renewable energy (Thoubboron, 2022).

Word Count: 4369

References

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