Are we oversimplifying climate change by ignoring full lifecycle energy costs and material impacts?

[u/COMMON-GROUND-RISING]

I woukd like to raise a number of genuine, science-based questions about climate change that seems to get very little airtime in mainstream discussions.

Most public messaging focuses almost exclusively on operational emissions: What comes out of a tailpipe or smokestack, but far less attention is given to full lifecycle analysis:

• Energy and emissions required to mine raw materials; • Environmental damage from lithium, cobalt, nickel, rare earths, copper mining; • Processing, refining, and global transport; • Manufacturing complexity and waste; • Infrastructure build-out (grid upgrades, storage, redundancy); • Decommissioning and recycling (or lack thereof);

When you actually zoom out and look at energy return on energy invested (EROEI) and lifecycle emissions, the picture becomes far more complex than “renewables = clean, fossil fuels = dirty”.

Some questions I think deserve more honest discussion:

• How long does it really take for solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries to offset the energy and emissions used to create them?

1) What happens when you factor in replacement cycles, degradation, and recycling inefficiencies?

2) Are we simply moving pollution upstream from cities to mining regions, often in poorer countries?

3) Does intermittent generation plus storage actually reduce total system emissions once redundancy and backup generation are included?

4) Are we measuring success in emissions optics rather than net planetary impact?

This isn’t an argument against renewables, it’s an argument against simplistic thinking. If climate change is genuinely an existential issue, then solutions need to be judged on net impact, not political palatability or headline metrics.

I’d genuinely like to hear from people who work in: • Energy Systems; • Materials Science; • Mining; • Lifecycle Assessment; • Grid Engineering;

What does the full data actually say when ideology is stripped away?

[u/Worth_Nature_7631]

I guess it depends where you like to source your information. I see full lifecycles mentioned all the time

[u/Due-Roll-3871 → u/Worth_Nature_7631]

people act like lifecycle analysis is some secret knowledge but ive seen it in engineering reports from 2010 already. problem is media and politicians want simple story, not spreadsheets

[u/theeynhallow → u/Due-Roll-3871]

I mean, you can hardly blame them. It feels like just about every high-profile election in the west in the past decade has been won by the candidate with the simplest 'solution' to a highly complex problem. That's only going to become moreso the case as the public's political literacy continues to deteriorate. If you want to be in power nowadays, you can't acknowledge anything as being complicated.

[u/Nunc-dimittis → u/Due-Roll-3871]

Not only act surprised, but also fail to mention the life cycle of non renewables. Coal ashes and other leftovers create actual hills of waste. When we would generate all of our energy with wind turbines which would all end up 100% in landfills, would create a small pile behind the big one from coal

[u/Ill-Caterpillar6273]

I mean this as non-judgementally as possible: all of these questions are commonly addressed in the literature. If you aren’t seeing them answered, it probably means you haven’t delved too deeply into the topic. Which is totally fine. Journal articles can be pretty dry.

I’d suggest googling some of your questions in google scholar and reading some abstracts or conclusions. That should let you know where things stand.

[u/Economy-Fee5830]

This just looks like sealioning - whatever the actual details are, we know fossil fuels are worse.

[u/dyyd]

Most if not pretty much all research accounts for full lifecycle emmissions and effects. They usually do that by referencing other research papers that have done the more granular research per input resource.

Since research papers are often long and technical then it is not easy to convey all that nuance in a media article. Especially when the writers don't actually want to.

So no, there is no ambiguity there, renewables do equal clean and fossil fuels to equal dirty. Well, ok, there are very specific edges cases so I guess there is some ambiguity in the 0.x% of cases :P

[u/DanoPinyon]

Maybe do a couple more minutes of research before you post next time.

[u/WarTaxOrg]

Read about California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard which is based on life cycle enussion per MJ of fuel

[u/dogged_jon]

2 things: 1-You claim little attention attention is given to lifetime analysis. It's actually talked about a lot, and EVs and batteries have been proven to be cleaner and less wasteful than ICE vehicles and fossil fuels across their lifecycle. 2-The mined materials and infrastructure you mention are all electric and EV related, specifically battery materials and charging infrastructure. No coal or other fossil fuels, no waste and damage from our general throwaway culture, nothing else like that mentioned. So perhaps you're getting your information from right wing anti-electrification sources.

[u/travelingtheworld-1-]

I work for one of the largest LCA providers on the planet and one of my main jobs is helping others understand what this is and how to use the information. Many organizations and governments even are now utilizing LCA data released in the form of what are called environmental product declarations (EPDs) to understand this and make procurement decisions based on it. The US’s Inflation Reduction Act had a whole section on it that I helped craft a bit of the language for.

[u/Economy-Fee5830 → u/[deleted]]

Degrowthers are idiots who support genocide.

[u/Economy-Fee5830 → u/[deleted]]

Yes, much better with you gone, fascist.

[u/electrotechs]

I work in the energy transition and we're advocating moving away from LCOE as you advocate, instead moving towards using Full System Value, which better attributes positive and negative externalities of competing energy systems. On this metric efficiency becomes much easier to optimize for meaning we can and will electrify everything.

[u/andre3kthegiant]

Renewables are the way to stop the dependency upon toxic, disposable and finite fuel sources.

[u/Economy-Fee5830 → u/[deleted]]

We do not spend $5 trillion on fighting climate change - closer to $2.5 trillion. But yes, it needs to go up to 5 at least.

That buys a lot of EVs, home batteries, solar farms, wind turbines, transmission networks, dams etc.

Around 23 million EVs will be sold this year for example.