[neilwilson]

For renewables to be renewable you have to make the solar panels and turbines and storage systems from the energy generated by solar panels and turbines - from raw materials to raw materials.

When you do that you find that although you may be able to build the current version of renewables cheaply, that is because we are leveraging very cheap fossil fuel energy from China, and a world full of fossil vehicles, not sustainable vehicles.

Renewables wear out - far faster than initially thought - particularly turbines. When they come to need replacing the costs will be very much higher - as the material and power requirements will be competing at that point with a world that can't use fossil power or fossil locomotion.

Nuclear, on the other hand, can go the other way. Nuclear power in a shipping container (ie the same system we use on submarines) should mean we can bring economies of scale to fission, using little more than steel pipes and a bit of wiring, with the waste transportable in the same way as submarines. After all we've been able to control nuclear plants since the 1950s using relatively simple technology.

[esperent]

> For renewables to be renewable you have to make the solar panels and turbines and storage systems from the energy generated by solar panels and turbines

This is only true if you're going for some pedantic definition of renewable energy where it only counts if you're at 100%. Which, this being HN, is the kind of thing I expect but...

The reality is different: we need to reduce the impact of climate change by any means necessary since are already in a state of climate emergency. If we calculate that using fossil fuels to build solar/wind turbines/wave energy/etc. and then using those to power homes will be a net negative in global emissions, then we should do it. We can build the next generation using renewable energy.

Worrying about whether this fits some definition of renewable energy is just a distraction. Renewable energy is not the end goal, tackling climate change and reducing pollution is.

[afiori]

I believe that the argument is that you should calculate "pollution per kWh" along the entire lifecycle, not just restricted to the operating time.

This will surely still put most renewables in front of fossil fuels and (depending how you count it) most nuclear.

But it is a largely ignored metric by the general public

[headsoup]

I don't think you answered the argument there, merely suggesting it's fine to kick the can down the road because "emergency now!"

First, we need to look at where renewables are being used and if they're actually in the areas of greatest pollution, i.e creating a net reduction rather than just meeting a government number.

[Schroedingersat]

The relevant metric is joules of forcing avoided and joules of forcing avoided per dollar. Nuclear is very rarely a good choice by this metric even compared to changing coal for gas.