Oh no. Nextera Energy, according to [1] is "... one of the largest wind and solar energy developers in North America". According to the article, 800 metric tons of concrete go into building a wind turbine.
Replacing all of the fossil fuel based power generation in the USA could require one million wind turbines according to some sources! My own back of the envelope calculations indicate that we would need close to 500,000 wind turbine to be built. I suppose that additional infrastructure and changes to the power grid for such a massive number of turbines could require addition concrete as well, spelling doom for sand.
So, industry needs angular sand, and that’s mostly found on rivers. The difference matters for concrete and such, but I wonder whether rivers are so fussy about the type of sand in them.
What would happen if you took the desert sand and used it to replace the river sand? Because you’re now mining and transporting twice, you’ll definitely have higher costs.
Sand type definitely matters for water body ability to hold water. I have read articles where Indian ponds/lakes(used in older India for conserving water) were completely destroyed by Britisher's in attempt to clean them. They disturbed the existing floor composition leading to higher water percolation which dried the lake quickly.
I doubt the ponds had sand, though. The size of sand particles is due to recent erosion and will continue to erode down to clay. Ponds and lakes are not capable of the level of erosion to create sand. Besides, sand is pretty poor at holding water. Remove the silt at the bottom of a lake clogging it up, and it'll percolate through much faster.
> but I wonder whether rivers are so fussy about the type of sand in them.
They might be. You might find that smoother sand flows more easily, and may be washed away. Certainly the size of grain is important, as smaller grains are carried more easily by the water.
If the intention is simply to displace water, then a better option may be larger rocks. These would eventually be worn down to make more angular sand.
It's even better than that. You can grind metal oxides that form a sizeable fraction of Earth's crust and are relatively easy to extract into a sort of "dust" or "sand" that will actively sequester carbon out of the air, with no further energy input needed. Not silicon-based rock, though,
If you want to read more on the topic, I enjoyed the book "The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization", by Vince Beiser (no affiliation)
Their data supposedly comes from "Sverdrup, H. U., Koca, D. & Schlyter, P. BioPhys. Econ. Res. Qual.2, 8 (2017)" Vague reference, no title.
This seems to be "BioPhysical Economics and Resource Quality", which is a Springer publication. Here's the actual article, "A Simple System Dynamics Model for the Global Production Rate of Sand, Gravel, Crushed Rock and Stone, Market Prices and Long-Term Supply Embedded into the WORLD6 Model", by Harald U. Sverdrup and others.[1] It's not even paywalled. Some quotes:
"The resources of sand and gravel are estimated at 12 trillion ton each, another 125 trillion tons of rock is suitable for crushing to sand and gravel and at least 42 trillion ton of quality stone is available for production of cut stone."
"Sand, gravel and stone materials use in construction amounts to about 47–59 billion tons per year"
"Sand and gravel show plateau behaviour and reach their maximum production rate in 2060–2070. The reason for the slight peak towards a plateau behaviour is partly driven by an expected population decline and increasing prices for sand and gravel, limiting demand. Assuming business-as-usual conditions rates remain at that level for centuries."
So we have another 1000-2000 years of sand left? Did anyone read the references?
Incidentally, if you are in Silicon Valley and need base rock, there's a place on Seaport Boulevard in Redwood City where you can get free concrete, ground into gravel-sized chunks. They charge for concrete disposal; the product is free.
Heavy structural materials tend strongly toward local utilisation as transport costs are so prohibitive (water transport possibly excepted). Concrete companies are the canonical anti-monopoly-tending industrial sector example in many econ texts.[1]
So your objection is somewhat like claiming oxygen starvation by fire is impossible since the atmosphere as a whole is 20% oxygen. It's what's near you that matters, and the local impacts of sand and gravel mining are often severe. As the Nature article notes:
Desert sand grains are too smooth to be useful, and most of the angular sand that is suitable for industry comes from rivers (less than 1% of the world’s land).
Riparian ecosystems are generally the most productive of terrestrial (vs. marine) zones, and activities at one point on a river will have major impacts downstream and even offshore.[2]
1. Which suggests strongly that frictions may be the most effective antimonopoly measures, and low-friction sectors tend strongly toward monopoly.
2. E.g., the Mississippi River dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, much of which is a consequence of Chicago toilets, 2000km north. As well as ag activity along the Mississippi-Missouri-Ohio-Arkansas-Red river system.
The problem seems to be that desert sand is too smooth to use in concrete. Perhaps a method is needed for fusing desert sand in such a way that it becomes rough. Perhaps large fresnel lenses that use sunlight to fuse the grains into small clumps?
Perhaps melt it into glass and then as it cools take the broken chunks and grind 'em up into sand again. A bit energy intensive but hey, if you're running out of sand and and all you have is the wind-blown smooth kind...
I had a similar thought, although I think fusing wouldn't solve the problem, as it wouldn't create a rough surface. That said, fusing might make it easier to fracture the sand and make rough surfaces.
I remember years ago I frequented a popular vanilla Minecraft server with a few hundred regular players. The world boundaries were somewhat tighter than they needed to be. The first resource to be exhausted wasn't ore, or trees, but sand.
I wonder how hard it would be to convert smooth sand into angular sand. Perhaps a pulsed laser could be used to fracture the grains into angular fragments or something like that.
Not only would being able to use desert sand create an abundant supply, but it'd be beneficial for fighting desertification.
They talk about the three main uses of sand being concrete, glass and electronics (the third one is actually wrong, only 15 % of silicon produced ends up in the semiconductor industry, the rest is used in metallurgy). I can imagine that one could use desert sand for the last two purposes but don't know how much of an impact that would make.
In most glass production, and in all silicon production you need sand of high chemical purity, desert sand is heavily contaminated with things that are not silicon dioxide.
1) wringing its hands about a problem that probably has less of an impact on construction prices than a single NIMBY catching a cold and missing the next zoning meeting
2) suggesting an alternative that would charitably be 1000x the current market clearing price, ignoring the fact that there are probably alternatives at 1.2x, 1.3x, and 1.8x the current price that will kick in long before the 1000x solution would become relevant
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There are many things that markets handle poorly, but this is not one of them, and the stupidity on display in this comments section is a stark reminder why markets are a good default choice for coordinating human activity.
No kidding. Sand is one of the cheapest substances you can buy, and always has been. If it increases enough in price, builders will use something else. They're still using sand...
As with every resource-depletion issue like this, the obvious answer is to reduce the number of humans. Consider never reproducing instead of trying to think of some clever technological solution.
Please don't tell me to consider suicide for myself. I do contemplate it a lot, I'm not very happy on this planet. I won't reproduce though; ain't no thang.
Yes, clearly suggesting limiting reproduction is equivalent to suggesting a person should kill themselves /sarcasm.
Many of the world's problems are a result of overpopulation. It is not an unreasonable point to make that individuals reducing reproduction world wide could help.
P.s. no need to now reply to me explaining how impossible / impractical / unfair / unimplementable such a suggestion might be.
So I've come around to the belief that we're on the verge of another massive civilization-level change that will be transformative. Think flight, electricity, motorized transport, plastic, writing, agriculture, domestication, firearms, etc (and no I'm not just listing techs from Civ).
That change will be when we have cheaper mass power generation than fossil fuels.
The reason this will be transformative is that a lot of problems basically go away when this happens.
Take burning hydrocarbons for energy. We can make hydrocarbons from the atmosphere. It's simple chemistry. It just makes no sense to spend hydrocarbons to make hydrocarbons from air. That's a net loss of power. If wind or solar (both of which have problems with inconsistent power generation, which is an issue of using them for the power grid). Batteries are of course one solution to this. Another is making fuel from air and using it when it's calm or at night or cloudy (respectively) to smooth out power output.
Bringing this back to sand, we can make sand. It's really just ground up stone and we have plenty of stone. Current sand is made from millions of years of erosion by water. But we can make more sand. It's just cost-prohibitive to do so now because energy is too expensive.
On a side note, I honestly don't think humanity can pull back on carbon emissions. Trying to change behaviour is largely going to be fruitless. What will change behaviour is other power sources being cheaper so that's what we need to strive towards.
2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15739917
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14400760
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206717
2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10569147
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9268951