Busting the 5 biggest myths about renewable energy
From the scale of danger posed by wind turbines to the actual price of installing home solar panels, here are the facts you should know.
The past 10 years have been the hottest on record, a dramatic increase that has raised ocean temperatures and elevations, melted glaciers, and increased damage from natural disasters including hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and tornados—effects that threaten wildlife species and human health.
Scientists are clear that reigning in the greenhouse gasses that are warming the planet require major shifts to renewable energies. Fortunately, the world is increasingly adopting these technologies. In 2025, coal dropped below renewables like solar and wind as the primary source of global electricity.
Still, myths about renewable energy are commonplace, says Andy Fitch, an attorney at Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law who coauthored a report rebutting dozens of misconceptions. This misinformation, and in some cases, purposeful disinformation, may lead people to oppose renewable projects in their communities. Support for wind farms off New Jersey, for example, dropped more than 20 percent in less than five years after misleading and false claims began circulating.
“It’s easy to prick holes into the idea of an energy transition,” because it is a new concept to many people, Fitch says.
Here are some of the major myths and what the science actually reveals.
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Myth #1 Renewable energy is unreliable.
There will always be days when clouds cover the sun or the wind is still. But those conditions are unlikely to occur at the same time in all geographic areas. “There’s always a way to coordinate the energy mix” to keep the lights on, Fitch says.
Today that coordination generally includes electricity from fossil fuels or coal. In California, where more than half the state’s power now comes from solar, wind, and other renewables, natural gas and other non-renewables generate the rest.
In the future, energy planners envision grids coordinated across large geographic areas that continually send renewable energy to places in a temporary weather lull. This is the system used by Sweden and Austria that get all or most of their power from renewables.
Improvements in storage technology will also increasingly allow renewable energy to be captured during sunny or windy days. Already, some 10 percent of California’s solar-powered energy is saved for evening use.
No energy method is perfect, and energy generated from fossil fuels also fail sometimes, Fitch notes, such as during the 2021 winter storm in Texas or 2023’s Winter Storm Elliott in the Eastern United States.
Myth #2 Rooftop solar is super pricey.
Back in 1980, solar panels cost a whopping $35 (in today’s dollars) per watt of generated energy. In 2024 that figure fell to 26 cents. Solar has become so cost-efficient that building and operating the technology is now cheaper over its lifespan than conventional forms of energy like gas, coal, and nuclear power.
Homeowners also save a significant amount of money after rooftop solar is installed, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. (The method remains cost effective, even after federal subsidies to purchase the panels ceased late last year.) A family who finances panels might save close to a thousand dollars a year in their electric bills, even taking into account payments on the loan.
People in apartment buildings or renters can also save money with solar. Many power companies have large solar arrays that give participating customers credit on their bill from the cheaper electricity. Landowners also benefit, especially when these solar farms are placed on agricultural land, known as agrivoltaics, allowing certain crops to use less water and farm animals to cool themselves in their shade.
Myth #3 Wind power inevitably kills wildlife.
With hundreds of thousands of turbines in operation, wind power now makes up eight percent of the world’s energy. But alongside these sprouting modern windmills has come stories of birds, whales, and even insects and bats killed or injured in their presence.
In some cases, wind energy can cause a small fraction of wildlife deaths, but they “pale in comparison to what climate change is doing to [the animals’] habitat,” says Douglas Nowacek, a conservation technology expert at Duke University. “If we’re going to slow down these negative changes, we have to go to renewable energy.”
When it comes to whales or other marine mammals, “we have no evidence—zero” that any offshore wind development has killed them, says Nowacek, who studies this as lead researcher in the school’s Wildlife and Offshore Wind program. (Most die instead from ship strikes and deadly entanglements in commercial fishing gear.)
Noise produced when heavy columns are driven into the ground during construction may temporarily disturb whales in the area, but the intrusion is so minor “one whale we tagged didn’t go anywhere when the pounding started,” he says. Blasting for offshore oil is much more disruptive, and oil spills extensively damage marine life, he says.
Wind turbines are proving to be a problem for certain species of birds—more than half-a-million die each year colliding with turbines in the U.S., the American Bird Conservancy estimates. But two-thirds of North America's birds also risk extinction from the rising temperatures of climate change.
Scientists working to mitigate bird strikes are studying why some species are more prone to harm, how high migrating birds fly over the water (enabling future turbines to be built lower), and whether painting the blades black or in contrasting patterns might help. Some companies are using cameras with artificial intelligence to temporarily slow or shut turbines as flocks fly by. One project in Spain saved 62 percent of vulnerable birds this way, with hardly any reduction in energy generation.
Myth #4 Electric cars can’t go far without recharging.
Electric vehicles are an important element of the transition to renewable energy because, unlike gas-powered cars, they can be charged by solar and wind energy. EVs are also more energy efficient, since they use nearly all of their power for driving, compared with traditional cars’ use of just 25 percent. (Most of the rest is lost as heat.)
Concerns that EVs can’t make it to their destination likely spring from early prototypes, when cars developed in the 1970s got less than 40 miles per charge. Today, some 50 models can go more than 300 miles, with some topping 500.
Worries about the longevity of EV batteries are also unfounded. Only one percent of batteries manufactured since 2015 have had to be replaced (outside of manufacturing recalls, which have been negligible in recent years). Studies done by Tesla found the charging capacity in its sedans dropped just 15 percent after 200,000 miles.
Car companies continue to research ways to improve the life and capacity of EV batteries, the most important component in the car, says Micah Ziegler, who studies sustainable energy and public policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
EV batteries evolved from the rechargeable lithium-ion technology pioneered in the 1990s for portable electronics. Updates over the years have reduced the need for environmentally damaging metals (including cobalt and nickel) and enhanced their energy density to allow for smaller, more powerful batteries. Future designs are expected to stretch their abilities further. Scientists are working on technologies that swap internal liquid electrolytes with a more stable solid materials, replace their lithium-ions with more readily available sodium, or use an innovative electrode from a single crystal that lasts millions of miles.
Myth #5 Renewables are on track to solve the climate crisis.
The world is in a better place than it would be without renewables. Before the 2015 Paris Agreement called for this energy transition, experts had forecast 4°C planetary warming by 2100; now they expect it to stay under 3°C, according to a recent report by World Weather Attribution, a climate research group. But even this target “would still lead to a dangerously hot planet,” the report states. Last summer Hawaiian observatories documented carbon dioxide concentrations above 430 parts per million—a record breaking high far above the 350 PPM Paris target.
To sufficiently slow climate warming, experts say wind generation must more than quadruple its current pace by 2030, and solar and other renewables must also be more widely adopted. Yet while global investments for renewable energy rose 10 percent in the first half of last year, it fell by more than a third in the U.S.
“Leaving our energy production as it is now is profoundly unsustainable,” Fisk says. That’s why it’s important “to make fair comparisons between one energy source and another”—a process that requires separating myths from the facts.
