(ConservativeSense.com) – Solar panels damaged in a rainstorm in Nebraska will be sent to landfills because they cannot be recycled. Some of the Scottsbluff Community Solar Panels can be reused, but most are damaged beyond repair. Despite being touted as environmentally friendly, more than 90% of damaged solar panels are sent to landfills, and the ones destroyed in Nebraska will take up landfill space the size of 3,000 football fields.
The destruction occurred in late June when a storm across Wyoming and Nebraska lashed baseball-size hailstones throughout the two states. The facility and most of its stock were destroyed within minutes.
According to National Geographic, the production of the panels requires the use of caustic chemicals, such as sodium hydroxide and hydrofluoric acid, and the production process involves electricity that must be obtained from fossil fuel sources. They also account for a large amount of waste, and there is currently no waste processing method.
Similarly, wind farms come at a high environmental cost. Paul Driessen, a senior fellow with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, said neither climate campaigners nor government agencies have examined or investigated the impact of so-called environmentally friendly alternatives to oil and gas. He confirms that no process exists to dispose of them after use.
Mr. Driessen furthermore maintains that companies that produce solar and wind power products “are notorious for hiding, minimizing, obfuscating, or misrepresenting their environmental and human health impacts.” He said wind turbines will last about 20 years, they do not guarantee enough electricity to boil an egg, their production involves the use of fossil fuel energy, and the only way to dispose of them is in landfills.
Finally, the Wildlife Society estimates that wind turbines kill more than half a million birds and almost a million bats every year. At one wind power plant in California, more than 3,500 birds were found dead in its first year of operation.
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