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Love this new tool I've been using from Interactive Brokers. I tell it what I care about ethically and it grades my stock portfolio based on the companies I invest in and their adherence to my moral preferences. Its a great way to invest and ensure you do so with an ethical motivation.
This is one of the portfolios I use for algorithmic trading. I'm trying to program into the algorithms a sense of ethics in how it trades and it seems to be working.
Avoiding "hazardous waste" *and* "greenhouse gas emissions" looks quite contradictory 🤔 so I'm a bit concerned that this "caring ethically" is nothing more than a selling point targeted a specific customer sector.
@2ck @kravietz Yea that confused me as well. If i prop up a wind turbine, which is little more than some metal blades, some wire, and a magnet, I am clearly reducing green house gas emissions.. Yet I wouldnt suddenly out of no where be dumping toxic waste in a river as a consequence of this decision... makes no sense, not sure what he really means.
Life-time of PV panels and wind turbines is 20-30 years.
After which they become, well, "toxic waste" with high content of metals such as cadmium. They require careful decommissioning, recycling and waste management.
Failed PV farms did contaminate vast areas with heavy metals in the past.
@kravietz @freemo I hadn't really thought about recycling PV panels since I've never been in the position of acquiring them. PV recyclers do exist http://www.pvcycle.org/press/pv-cycle-and-recycle-pv-solar-announce-integrated-partnership-for-recycling-in-usa/ . Reclamation is much lower than it could be, but are you saying that you think these efforts will fail? If not, continuing to invest in solar and expanding the portfolio to include solar recycling seems like an appropriate course of action.
I absolutely believe we should be investing in PV and any other low-carbon technologies.
My critique is primarily targeted at the attitude of some proponents of PV and wind who always assume the best case, highest efficiency and zero waste from their preferred technology while assuming the worst case scenario and total disaster for alternatives they dislike.
But engineering doesn't work this way...
@kravietz
There are always extremists and idealists on any side of an issue.
@2ck