A Quote by Michael Shellenberger

All renewables thus require a material throughput - from mining to processing to installing to disposing of the materials later as waste - that is orders of magnitude larger than for non-renewable energy sources.

Michael Shellenberger

Quote Topics

Energy Energy Sources Larger Later Magnitude Material Materials Mining Orders Processing Renewable Renewable Energy Renewable Energy Sources Require Sources Than Thus Waste

Quote Author

Michael Shellenberger
American - Author
Born: 1971

Solar makes electricity expensive for two inherently physical reasons. Sunlight is dilute, requiring 10 to 15 times as much materials and mining, and up to 5,000 times more land, than non-renewables. And sunlight is unreliable, which reduces the value of solar as it becomes a larger part of energy supplies.

Michael Shellenberger

I actually argue that renewables are worse than fossil fuels. It's a physical manifestation of lower power densities. More land, more materials, more mining, more metals, more waste.

Michael Shellenberger

Normally skeptical journalists routinely give renewables a pass. The reason isn't because they don't know how to report critically on energy - they do regularly when it comes to non-renewable energy sources - but rather because they don't want to.

Michael Shellenberger

We need a national renewable energy goal. Such a goal, sometimes called a renewable energy standard (RES), would spell out what percentage of our power America plans to get from renewable sources.

Van Jones

Replacing traditional sources of energy completely with renewable energy is going to be a challenging task. However, by adding renewable energy to the grid and gradually increasing its contribution, we can realistically expect a future that is powered completely by green energy.

Tulsi Tanti

Obviously, nu-que-lar power is, uh, a renewable source of energy, and the less demand there is for non-renewable sources of energy, like fossil fuels, the better it off it is for the American people.

George W. Bush

No one knows how to make going to orbit orders of magnitude safer and orders of magnitude more affordable.

Burt Rutan

The more traditional fuel sources we have relied on as a nation - coal, oil, and natural gas - I'm hoping they can allow us the financial springboard to move to the next generation of energy sources: renewables and alternatives.

Lisa Murkowski

I have been working for years to promote a responsible energy policy that works to increase energy efficiency and invest in alternative and renewable energy sources.

Lois Capps

I spent more than 20 years of my professional career researching and developing renewable energy sources.

Jerry McNerney

Renewable energy also creates more jobs than other sources of energy - most of these will be created in the struggling manufacturing sector, which will pioneer the new energy future by investment that allows manufacturers to retool and adopt new technologies and methods.

Jay Inslee

Just as fossil fuels from conventional sources are finite and are becoming depleted, those from difficult sources will also run out. If we put all our energy and resources into continued fossil fuel extraction, we will have lost an opportunity to have invested in renewable energy.

David Suzuki

I always thought that using more efficient energy sources, pushing the clean energy technologies such as renewable energies are important.

Fatih Birol

Surveying the available alternative energy sources for criteria such as energy density, environmental impacts, reliance on depleting raw materials, intermittency versus constancy of supply, and the percentage of energy returned on the energy invested in energy production, none currently appears capable of perpetuating this kind of society.