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Onshore wind is sold as 25-year infrastructure, but a UK and Denmark study found that after just 10 years. The average UK wind farm loses roughly one-third of its output. Then by 12 to 15 years, many become completely uneconomic to run. Less power, more wear, higher maintenance. So the farms need "repowering," they call it. That means ripping out old machines and replacing them early. So more steel, more blades shipped in from China, more waste and more subsidies. The 25-year lifespan claim was short enough, but in reality, turbines are barely lasting a decade.

Hernieuwbare energie na ongeveer 28 jaar ziet er zo uit. Netjes gerecycled.🤣

This isn't just a pile of debris - it’s the future of green energy waste hidden in plain sight. Millions of solar panels are hitting their end-of-life cycle, and the world is completely unprepared for the coming toxic avalanche. By 2050, the International Renewable Energy Agency projects up to 78 million metric tons of solar e-waste. Where is it all going to go? The industry boasts that solar panels are '95% recyclable'. Technically, yes - because they are made of glass, aluminum and copper. But economics always trumps physics. In Australia and the US, it costs roughly $20 to $28 to properly disassemble and recycle a single panel, but only about $4 to dump it in landfill. Because there is no financial incentive, up to 90% of decommissioned panels go straight into the ground. Each solar panel is an industrial 'sandwich' bound tightly by heavy polymers. To extract the microscopic amounts of valuable silver and high-purity silicon requires energy-intensive chemical and thermal baking. When they are crushed or left to fracture in landfills, heavy metals like lead and cadmium can leach into the surrounding soil and groundwater, turning 'clean energy' into a multi-generational hazardous waste problem. The crisis is accelerating faster than models predicted. Because solar cells degrade and lose efficiency, and because newer, cheaper panels hit the market, consumers and solar farms are ripping out functional systems at least a decade early to upgrade. This compressed lifecycle destroys the narrative of a long-term, stable asset and creates an endless loop of unrecyclable industrial trash.

🚨🇬🇧 Net Zero just got exposed again and it's worse than we thought. I've been saying it for years now. Net zero isn't about saving the planet it's a massive scam and a giant money laundering operation dressed up as green virtue. The latest proof just dropped from a Freedom of Information release. An internal UK Government dossier quietly admits that Ed Milibands beloved wind turbines and solar farms wreck biodiversity destroy landscapes mess with water resources and even cause pollution plus emissions during construction and running. Yet here we are with Miliband as Energy Secretary ramming through approval after approval for these big projects overriding local councils and green belt land all to hit his 2030 targets. The fact the Miliband family has their fingers all over these net zero deals feels proper dodge. While they push this agenda the countryside gets trashed food producing farmland gets covered and ordinary people pay the price in higher bills and lost landscapes. Wake up folks. This was never about the environment. #NetZeroScam #ClimateHoax #GreenAgenda #Miliband #EnergyCrisis #WakeUpBritain

Building 1 GW of solar capacity is not clean. It requires around 18.5 tons of silver. 3,400 tons of polysilicon. And more than 10,000 tons of aluminum. Producing the polysilicon alone consumes thousands of tons of quartz, coal, petroleum, coke, charcoal, and wood chips. Refining the silver for 1 GW uses roughly 4,600 megawatt hours of electricity, the annual power use of 400 U.S. homes. Producing the aluminum consumes nearly 2 million gigajoules of energy, enough to power more than 100,000 households for a year. Solar power is built with massive fossil energy inputs. Only the output is labeled "green." These are the realities campaigners never want to talk about.

As of 2026, 81% of the world's primary power is still provided by coal, oil and gas. Wind and solar give just 6.5% across all transport, heating and industry, despite the massive scale-up of renewables since 1988. Global primary energy consumption is still rusted on to fossil fuels, and probably always will. The story gets worse. Renewables are not a viable energy source without substantial backup from fossil fuels. How did this disastrous mismatch happen? According to recent data from the Energy Institute Statistical Review and the IEA, decades of government incentives, feed-in tariffs and tax credits have heavily driven the deployment of wind and solar. But get this? The energy is fundamentally incompatible with the existing world power grids. This wasn't about changing the climate. It was, and is, an economic pivot. Wealthier Western nations have subsidised two generations of wind and solar power, yet they failed utterly to recognise the incompatibility of renewable power with existing grid networks. They have drastically underinvested in the infrastructure for the grid upgrades or the battery storage required to handle the volatile, intermittent nature of renewable energy. Traditional grids rely on synchronous generation (large spinning turbines in coal, gas or hydro plants). These provide natural inertia and keep the grid frequency stable at 50 or 60 Hz. Wind and solar use inverter-based technology, which cannot provide this essential stability. It's not that no thought was given to battery storage, but the sheer scale required was vastly underestimated. Now we're falling behind. Building grid-scale battery systems capable of backing up a nation for days of low wind and sun (known as a Dunkelflaute) faces massive physical constraints - specifically in mineral mining for lithium, cobalt, copper, plus the staggering costs. You cannot mine the quartz, smelt the silicon, forge the steel or transport the massive blades of a wind turbine without high-density heat and power. This is only provided by coal, oil, and gas. Furthermore, because wind and solar are intermittent, they require rapid-start gas peaker plants or spinning coal reserves to idle in the background, ready to jump in the second the weather shifts. The grid struggles to handle this thermodynamic mismatch. We are trying to plug intermittent, weather-dependent sources into an industrial grid that demands absolute, second-by-second equilibrium. We have had more than a century to refine grid efficiency. Rebuilding the world's power grids to handle this incompatible energy isn't just difficult - it is a fresh financial black hole. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, achieving net zero will require a staggering $275 trillion in cumulative capital spending by 2050 - a massive portion of which must be diverted just to overhaul and rebuild these incompatible power grids and storage systems. The renewable supply chain won't rescue us either. It's firmly anchored in the fossil fuel economy. After 40 years of guilt, heavy subsidies and political momentum, fossil fuels still carry the heavy cross of sustaining human civilisation.

Take a look inside the concrete foundations of Clarke Creek Wind Farm, QLD. 1,600 tonnes of concrete + 100 tonnes of steel per foundation. Total project: 120,000 cubic meters of reinforced concrete. After 25 years these will be fatigued and effectively un-reusable. Another massive legacy for future generations. 👇🏽

Stop These Things' Weekly Round Up: 17 May 2026 stopthesethings.com/2026/05/17/sto… via @StopTheseThings

De 55 kärnkraftverk som Frankrike byggde mellan 1973 och 1980 kostade cirka 100 miljarder euro i dagens penningvärde – och levererar stabilt 75 % av landets el. Sen skulle man bli grön och bygga vindkraft: Man har betalat över 150 miljarder euro för att få fram ynka 8 % av elen – och den kommer när det blåser, inte när vi faktiskt behöver den. Alltså: dubbelt så dyrt för en tiondel av effekten, plus att det är totalt opålitligt. Vindkraft är inte bara dyrt. Det är en katastrofalt dåligt affär.

Heartbreaking scenes at Durridgere State CONSERVATION Area. The NSW Govt, EnergyCo and ACEREZ have bulldozed what looks like over 100,000 trees, carving a brutal corridor of destruction through thick forest. From the air it’s just endless piles of woodchips as far as the eye can see — all in the name of renewables. At what cost? 🌳😔

Tens of thousands of slabs of reinforced concrete weighing up to 1,000 tonnes are being abandoned in the ground as turbines hit the end of their working lives. The reinforced concrete base of a typical 2-3 MW wind turbine can weigh anywhere from 400 to 800 tonnes. But the concrete foundations of even bigger turbines (5 MW+) can exceed 1,000 tonnes. As lifespans end these massive concrete monoliths are abandoned where they lie. This is an issue of significant contention. In many jurisdictions, including Australia and the US, decommissioning regulations only require the operator to ensure the concrete foundation stays at a depth of 1 meter (approx. 3.3 feet) below the surface. The remaining 3-plus metres of these steel-reinforced concrete fossils are typically left in the ground indefinitely. Over the decades, they can interfere with deep-soil hydrology or remain as a permanent industrial remnant in rural landscapes. Contracts usually say operators are responsible for decommissioning. But the financial reality is complex. Bank guarantees or bonds set aside for removal (around €50,000 or $100,000 per turbine) are frequently far too low. Real-world estimates for total removal and site restoration can exceed $200,000 to $400,000 per unit. If the cost of total removal ($200k–$400k) exceeds the bond set aside by the operator ($50k–$100k), there is a strong financial incentive for companies to declare bankruptcy . Or they sell the asset to a shell company as the turbine nears its end-of-life, leaving a landowner with the bill. While the steel towers are more easily recyclable, their triple fibreglass blades are notoriously difficult to process and often end up in turbines blade graveyards. The theoretical benefits from renewable technology are meaningless compared with the staggering environmental costs.

Many of the onshore wind farms along the coasts of the UK and Denmark are falling apart after only 10 years. A study reveals that energy contributions from wind farms begin to fall sharply after only 10 to 15 years, leaving the skeletons of steel and plastic blowing in the wind. The economic analysis reveals the lifespan of an onshore turbine is not 20 to 25 years, as stated by the wind industry itself, supported by the UK Government. This peer reviewed British study reveals that the energy production of onshore wind farms falls substantially as they get older, due to wear and tear. Energy and environmental economist, Professor Gordon Hughes (University of Edinburgh), carried out the statistical analysis of wind farm performance data in the UK and Denmark. He concluded that load factors, like electricity generated as a percentage of capacity, declined a lot faster than expected, suggesting a baseline 10 to 15 year lifespan. This is when the technical life of most turbines crunch to halt, and become unprofitable to continue. Rising maintenance costs makes them uneconomical. The study found the average UK wind farm's ability to meet electricity demand had fallen by a third after around 10 years, leading to a conclusion that many are fully uneconomic to run after only 12 years. While the wind industry generally forecasts a 25-year lifespan, the data reveals a different reality about the viability of keeping them spinning so long. Many companies now 'repower' (replace old turbines with new ones) long before the 25-year target to maximise subsidies and output. This often ends the lifespan of the original hardware much sooner. The wind farm study is published by the 'Renewable Energy Foundation on the Performance of Wind Farms in the United Kingdom and Denmark, 2012'.

This is Cindy, a farmer on generational land in western Victoria. Behind her: old-growth eucalyptus forest, trees here before Federation, home to Swift Parrots, goannas, remnant woodland biolinks & Avon Creek. Her family has protected it for generations. VicGrid wants to rip out these ancient trees for 85m transmission towers and carve through biodiverse farmland for the VNI West project. They ignore their own Key Biodiversity Areas & guidelines. Farmers like Cindy have planted, fenced, & conserved what bureaucrats now want to industrialise for foreign companies. Please sign the petition: farmersfightback.com/petition

Stop These Things' Weekly Round Up: 10 May 26 stopthesethings.com/2026/05/10/sto… via @StopTheseThings

Major wind turbine manufacturers have been hit by an asbestos scandal. At Australia's $4 billion Golden Plains wind farm, testing on turbines has come back positive. Units are now quarantined and the manufacturer, based in Denmark, is launching global checks across its supply chain. Serious environmental concerns are mounting. Wind blades can't be recycled, not economically or at scale. So tens of thousands of tons of blades are dumped every year, buried in pits with endless more coming as first-generation turbines hit their end of life (which is typically just 15 years). An industry sold as clean is leaving mountains of toxic waste that can't be recycled.

Stop These Things' Weekly Round Up: 3 May 2026 stopthesethings.com/2026/05/03/sto… via @StopTheseThings

Stop These Things' Weekly Round Up: 3 May 2026 stopthesethings.com/2026/05/03/sto… via @StopTheseThings

For the first time in decades, polling in major economies shows a majority favoring nuclear over fossil fuels. Even coal, oil, and gas are increasingly preferred over large-scale wind and solar projects, which consume vast landscapes. After years of narrative-driven policy, the physical reality of the grid is forcing a return to reliable energy density. The era of 'pure' renewable targets is hitting a reliability wall. In South Korea, this wasn't a choice of preference, but a mechanical necessity. In early 2026, the nation saw a significant surge in coal imports—up nearly 14% year-on-year—driven by the need for firm capacity that actually works when the sun sets or the wind fails. During the Middle East energy shocks of early 2026, nations didn't double down on intermittent wind. Instead, they lifted coal caps, fast-tracked nuclear restarts and secured LNG (gas) for grid flexibility. One thing is becoming clear: renewables are losing their status as the primary solution as governments realise Net Zero is a fantasy if it leads to economic collapse or blackouts. The real winners in 2026 are nuclear for baseload and gas for stability. It is a definite shift away from Net Zero 'at all costs' and back to old-fashioned energy security. Battery storage simply cannot meet industrial demand at scale, and remains a marginal player for the heavy lifting required by modern economies. It may be a harsh and unexpected reality check for some. But carbon targets are meaningless when the lights go out.

The world will have to deal with 43 million tons of decommissioned wind turbine blades by Net Zero in 2050. To put that in perspective, it’s the equivalent weight of 215,000 locomotives. These blades are made of high-strength composites designed to survive decades of brutal weather, and they are notoriously difficult to recycle. They were built to last, but they weren't built to disappear. Every turbine standing today will likely be decommissioned and replaced at least once before 2050. Without a cost-effective way to recycle fibre-reinforced polymers, the majority of these massive blades are destined for eternity - buried forever in turbine graveyards. China, Europe, and the US will account for the vast majority of this waste, creating a mountainous industrial heartache that many Net Zero models simply haven't priced in. But 43 million tons of purely composite blade waste every 20 years is a colossal physical reality.

Every wind turbine and solar panel on earth today is expected to be decommissioned and replaced long before Net Zero in 2050. We aren't just building a new energy grid, we're initiating the world’s largest, most resource-intensive replacement cycle. The staggering cost of these recurring cycles is expected to add trillions to an already massive price tag. McKinsey Global estimates the transition requires $9.2 trillion per year, totaling $275 trillion by 2050. However, these figures are only the baseline - they don't account for the new price ceiling driven by the physical failure and required replacement of first-generation infrastructure. Most of today’s 225,000 wind turbines (over 1.2 TW capacity) will exceed their 20–30 year lifespans by 2050. This necessitates waves of decommissioning or 'repowering' on a scale never seen before. With wingspans rivaling an Airbus A380 or Boeing 747, these massive composite structures are fueling blade graveyards that present a disposal challenge unmatched in human history. Projections suggest 43 million tonnes of blade waste and 60–80 million tonnes of solar PV waste by 2050. A global rebuild of this scale must compete for finite resources. China currently refines 90% of the global rare earth supply, creating a precarious geopolitical dependency for the permanent magnet technology required for modern turbines. * Rare earths: Neodymium and praseodymium for magnets; dysprosium and terbium for heat resistance. * Essential metals: Massive quantities of copper for wiring, tungsten for components, and tin for soldering. * Physical scale: Larger direct-drive turbines require 0.5–2 tonnes of rare-earth magnets per MW, supported by vast quantities of steel and concrete. A 'second transition' is destined to become a third, and a fourth—replacing the entire global inventory every few decades. This demands a WWII-scale 'D-Day' mobilisation of capital and labor, occurring just as subsidies fade and private investment thins due to uneven returns. Furthermore, the 'diesel paradox' remains: heavy mining equipment is still powered by the very same fossil fuels the transition seeks to eliminate. The math suggests a looming collision between physical reality and political agendas. Image: The Casper Regional Landfill in Wyoming has become a global focal point for 'clean energy waste'.