Thanks to JohnMC over at Harry’s Place I got to be aware of a post on the Climate Change Despatch site about the horrendous levels of non-recyclable waste generated by allegedly ‘green’ energy production facilities. The author, Paul Dreissen, has crunched the numbers and the amount of waste and environmental damage done by so-called clean energy is stupendeous.

Mr Driessen looked at he amount of un-recyclable waste generated in the United States alone and it is worryingly high and looks to me far worse for the planet than using fossil fuels. Here’s part of what Mr Dreissen has said about this waste:

“Depending on turbine size and height, US onshore wind turbine foundations are 50-100 feet in diameter and 10-16 feet deep. Each is composed of 460-1,500 cubic yards of concrete, weighing 1,100-2,700 tons.

That’s 76,000 foundations and (using averages) 145,000,000 tons of concrete and rebar, just for the USA!

Onshore wind turbine blades average 210 feet in length, 13 feet in height, and 24 tons. (Offshore turbine blades are much longer, thicker, and heavier.) Each turbine has three blades.

That’s 5,500,000 tons of American blades. Laid end-to-end, they’d stretch 48,000,000 feet: 9,100 miles – nearly two round-trip flights from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles!

Using a combined residential/industrial average of 4×6 feet in size, two inches deep, and 55 pounds per panel, the 650 million United States photovoltaic solar panels add up to 2,600,000,000 cubic feet of American solar trash, weighing 18,000,000 tons!

This includes only currently operating United States onshore turbines and panels – not those already dismantled, future installations, offshore wind turbines, or EV or grid-backup batteries.

Cumulative global wind garbage (blades only) is projected to reach 200,000,000 tons by 2050. Cumulative global solar trash: 78,000,000 tons!

Turbine blades are made from fiberglass or carbon-fiber composites. They’re extremely difficult to cut into pieces and almost impossible to recycle.

Solar panels are theoretically recyclable, at least for their aluminum frames – but their copper, silver, and other metals are embedded in glass or plastic and nearly impossible to recover economically.”

That’s millions of tons of waste that cannot be economically be reused and is in addition to the horrific levels of environmentally damaging mining and other waste generated in order to produce devices to generate so-called ‘green energy’.

Whilst Britain’s numbers are liable to be less than those of the USA it is still likely that decommissioning Britain’s failing renewable energy systems will do similar damage to the UK environment. It’s too high a price to pay for reducing the output of CO2 which is a trace gas in the Earth’s atmosphere.

You can read the entirety of Mr Dreissen’s piece via the link below.

Links

Original piece about the waste generated by solar and wind installations.

https://climatechangedispatch.com/wind-solar-waste-disposal/

Harry’s place August hangout page where I saw the link

https://hurryupharry.net/2026/08/01/august-hangout-2/