Wind energy is a promising solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants. Researchers from DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley have found that wind turbines do not release harmful emissions, require water for cooling, or require water for cooling. They also provide air-quality, public health, and greenhouse gas emission benefits by reducing reliance on combustion-based electricity. By 2030, wind energy can reduce 16 of the electricity sector’s CO2 emissions and 23 by 2050. By 2050, wind energy can offset 12.3 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases.
Ocean energy and offshore wind energy (OWE) are potential renewable energy sources for decarbonizing and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Once installed, wind and solar power generation virtually no greenhouse gases are emitted, and they pay off the energy related to their manufacturing and construction within a matter of time. Wind energy plays a significant role in reducing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and sulfur dioxide (SO2) in nearly every state.
Wind energy generates around 11 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour (g CO2/kWh) of electricity generated, compared to about 980 g CO2/kWh for coal. It does not emit any greenhouse gases and has an extremely good energy balance. By replacing electricity generated from other sources such as fossil fuel power stations, wind energy can lead to an overall reduction in carbon emissions.
Onshore wind turbines generate electricity at a utility scale, comparable to power plants, and they replace fossil fuels with emissions-free electricity. By generating electricity without emitting CO2, wind power directly reduces carbon emissions from the power sector, which is one of the largest contributors to climate change.
📹 The truth about wind turbines – how bad are they?
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What is the biggest problem with wind turbines?
Wind power is a rapidly growing energy source that offers numerous advantages, including creating jobs, enabling economic growth, being a clean and renewable energy source, benefiting local communities, and being cost-effective. However, it faces challenges such as competition from other low-cost energy sources, noise production, and impact on local wildlife.
In the U. S., wind turbine service technicians are the fastest-growing job of the decade, with the industry potentially supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs by 2050. Additionally, wind power generates over 10 of the country’s net total energy in 2022, with investments in new wind projects adding $20 billion to the economy.
Wind turbines harness energy from the wind using mechanical power to spin a generator and create electricity, avoiding 336 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. This energy can be used to fund school budgets, reduce homeowners’ tax burdens, and address local infrastructure projects.
Cost-effective wind energy is also a significant advantage, with land-based, utility-scale wind turbines providing one of the lowest-priced energy sources available today. Advances in wind energy science and technology continue to improve its competitiveness.
Wind turbines can be easily integrated into various settings, such as agricultural and multi-use working landscapes, rural or remote areas, and coastal and island communities. By addressing technical and socio-economic challenges, researchers can further expand wind energy’s capabilities and community benefits.
Are wind turbines really environmentally friendly?
Wind energy offers numerous environmental benefits, including reducing carbon emissions, recouping energy used in manufacturing and installing wind turbines quickly, and being a clean energy source. However, the environmental impact of wind energy is significant globally and nationally, with local impacts being felt locally. If wind turbines are inappropriately located, they could cause collisions, disturbances, or habitat damage to birds.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds supports the growth of offshore and onshore wind power generation in the UK, provided they are designed to minimize impacts on bird populations, avoiding turbines near major migration pathways and important habitats.
How can farming reduce greenhouse gases?
To reduce agricultural greenhouse gases, use livestock feed additives, practice rotational grazing to sequester carbon in the soil, select high-quality feed to reduce methane released from enteric fermentation, manage manure to reduce methane and nitrous oxide, cover manure storage facilities, optimize manure use with a nutrient management plan, and capture and combust methane from manure storage. These practices can help sequester carbon and mitigate GHG emissions from livestock and manure, ultimately reducing the overall greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural activities.
How do we reduce greenhouse gases?
To reduce greenhouse gas emissions at home, consider a home energy audit, use renewable energy sources like solar panels, buy green tags, purchase carbon offsets, adjust your thermostat, install solar lights, and use energy-saving light bulbs. Installing programmable thermostats, sealing and insulating heating and cooling ducts, replacing single-paned windows with dual-paned ones, and installing insulated doors can all reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 5%.
Renewable energy sources like solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro energy are gaining worldwide support, with Denmark’s wind energy providing 10% of its total energy needs. In most states, customers can purchase green power (50 to 100% renewable energy) and find a complete list of options on the US Department of Energy’s Buying Clean Electricity web page.
How much CO2 is reduced by wind turbines?
In 2013, the US produced 167. 7 million MWh of wind energy, reducing CO2 emissions by 126. 8 million tons, equivalent to a 5% reduction in power sector emissions or taking 20 million cars off the road. The top 10 states with the most carbon reductions from wind energy are Texas, Illinois, California, Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Wyoming. States achieving a 10% reduction from wind energy alone include California, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont, and Washington State. A typical 2 MW wind turbine avoids around 4, 000-4, 500 tons of carbon emissions annually, equivalent to the annual emissions of over 700 cars.
Can wind turbines help capture carbon dioxide?
New research suggests that wind turbines could potentially remove carbon dioxide from the air and use it for concrete production. While wind turbines are widely accepted as a planet-friendly solution to climate change, they have faced controversies in the past. However, they are now being considered for their potential to offer a dual function in the fight against climate change. Wind turbines use the kinetic energy produced by the wind to create electricity.
What are 3 bad things about wind turbines?
Wind power is a rapidly growing energy source that offers numerous advantages, including creating jobs, enabling economic growth, being a clean and renewable energy source, benefiting local communities, and being cost-effective. However, it faces challenges such as competition from other low-cost energy sources, noise production, and impact on local wildlife.
In the U. S., wind turbine service technicians are the fastest-growing job of the decade, with the industry potentially supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs by 2050. Additionally, wind power generates over 10 of the country’s net total energy in 2022, with investments in new wind projects adding $20 billion to the economy.
Wind turbines harness energy from the wind using mechanical power to spin a generator and create electricity, avoiding 336 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. This energy can be used to fund school budgets, reduce homeowners’ tax burdens, and address local infrastructure projects.
Cost-effective wind energy is also a significant advantage, with land-based, utility-scale wind turbines providing one of the lowest-priced energy sources available today. Advances in wind energy science and technology continue to improve its competitiveness.
Wind turbines can be easily integrated into various settings, such as agricultural and multi-use working landscapes, rural or remote areas, and coastal and island communities. By addressing technical and socio-economic challenges, researchers can further expand wind energy’s capabilities and community benefits.
Why are wind turbines not good for the environment?
Wind turbines have negative environmental impacts, including visual impact on landscapes, fire risk, noise pollution, and potential harm to birds and bats. The wind energy industry and the U. S. government are working to reduce these effects. Service roads in land-based wind power projects further exacerbate environmental issues. The production of metals and materials used in turbine components also contributes to environmental impacts, often involving fossil fuels.
While most materials can be reused or recycled, turbine blades are currently constructed and cannot be recycled. Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have developed a thermoplastic resin system to manufacture wind turbine blades, allowing for recycling and reducing energy consumption. This approach aims to address these environmental concerns and promote sustainable practices in the wind energy industry.
How do wind turbines reduce air pollution?
Wind turbines generate electricity without directly emitting air pollutants, which are known to affect climate and human health. Nevertheless, they function in an environment devoid of external factors.
How do wind turbines reduce greenhouse gases?
Wind energy represents a sustainable and environmentally friendly alternative to traditional sources of electricity. Unlike other forms of energy production, it does not emit any greenhouse gases and maintains a favorable energy balance. The calculation of CO₂ savings attributable to wind energy is based on the typical CO₂ emissions associated with the generation of one kWh of power.
What greenhouse gases are caused by farming?
Agricultural activities, such as tilling fields, planting crops, and shipping products, contribute to the emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. These emissions account for around 11 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Farm practices like reducing tillage, decreasing empty land, returning crop biomass residue, and increasing cover crop use can help reduce carbon emissions. Livestock, responsible for 14.
5 percent of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, are the leading contributors. One cow emits 220 pounds of methane per year, with methane being 28 times more capable of trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Livestock require a lot of land and may overgraze, leading to unhealthy soil quality and reduced species diversity. Reducing methane emissions can be achieved by switching to plant-rich diets, feeding cattle more nutritious food, managing manure, and composting.
📹 Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions – What You Can Do
Greehouse #climatechange #environment #ngscience In this NGScience climate series, we look at the things you can do as an …
I live in an area where a “wind farm” sprang up. Initially, it wasn’t bad, other than the eyesore it created. It ruined the view of the countryside, day and night. Just very recently, a Second Phase was started, (which we were not told of, and by the time it was made public, it was finalized where the placement of the new turbines were going. Effectively, we were locked out of the process) and is nearly complete. With that Second Phase, 2 wind turbines were placed very, very close to my home (one being about 3/10’s of a mile away, the other about 1/2 mile away). Literally just 4 days ago, they got them powered up, running. When they are in operation, it sounds like a jet flying high overhead in the sky, but in the same place without moving. It produces a constant sound from the blade tips passing through the air. It is very, very annoying. I can see why people complain about them.
As someone whose home has just been surrounded by a wind farm, they suck way more than those who don’t live by them realize. I also went back to college for environmental sciences because I very much care about the environment, so I’m not just being crabby here. I’ve lived in this area nearly 60 years now. We have tons of migratory birds that pass through our numerous ponds and marshes. I guess time will tell if they manage getting past these monstrosities with whirling blades moving at around 200 mph. I know we usually have Bald Eagles, but I haven’t seen a single one since the turbines went up this fall. I’ve loved the quiet of the night here all of these years. The masses of stars in the sky were beautiful. Now I close the drapes to stop seeing the hundreds of red flashing lights that surround my property from every direction. I hate the thought of having to keep my windows closed on beautiful spring evenings to get the sounds of the motors and the swoosh of the blades out of my head. The gravel roads are a mess of deep tire tracks and washboards. The massive power lines, poles, transformers by the dozens and of course a new power station. There will be quieter days at times when the winds are silent, but they don’t tend to build these turbines in places where there are too many windless days. The turbines will also shut down in high winds which seems ironic. I can say with 100% certainty that the recorded number of birds these things kill won’t come close to reality as nature’s cleanup crews will leave little to no trace of the bodies by the time the sun comes up the next morning.
As one of the owners of a 106 turbine wind farm I worked on they have a 20 year payback. The main reason they built them was for the tax breaks. The ones i worked on were 1.5 MW and cost 1.5 million bucks a piece. Keep in mind also that if the grid goes down they shut down. The sub Sonics from blades is not pleasant. The fiber glass blades are not reclaimed. And they are not simple to work on. Try working on them. I have and don’t like it.
I worked on a coal mine. Each truck consumed about 15,000 liters of diesel a DAY. We moved dirt to get to coal. Drilling, Blasting, draglines, dump trucks, wash plants, trains, shipping, road trains, burning. If wind turbines are more efficient then this process from start to finish. I’m all for it. People talk about the impact a turbine has on the environment. This doesn’t come CLOSE to the destruction I was part of to mine coal. Killing birds has NOTHING on what we did to keep your lights on at night with coal.
The issue is much more complex than you understand. Wind farms are essentially fuel reduction devices for gas power stations. The cost of integrating them into a grid is what matters, not the cost of the turbine itself. Without a power source capable of ramping up when wind ramps down, wind turbines have zero value. Nuclear is the only hope of decarbonizing our grids. Germany and France are real world test cases for that.
Several hundreds of them here locally. Years ago while in between jobs I took a fence building job. One of the many we built was for a lady out in the country. She was a secretary for a bigwig with the local wind farm company. While talking with her she said she had ask him if all of it was worth it. He said he didn’t give a damn if they ever produced a single KW. Why? Because each tower was a million dollars a year in green credits they can sell to other companies. My thoughts about these local ones is this. It is over 2.5 million dollars each to build these here. That money is largely on my tax dollars as the company building these wind farms is highly subsidies. Why is any electricity produced by them not free then to tax payers? Doing the math on over 200 of them nearby we could burn dollar bills and make just as much electricity. A limited life span of these also makes me wonder the sense of them. Ever watch the vids of when these things breakdown and come flying apart? The pieces that come crashing down would easily destroy anything in their path. These things look good on paper and quell the tree hugging society but much like this vid points out if you take all things into consideration the concept needs a bit of rethinking much like nuclear power plants have undergone.
Wind turbines are killing migratory birds by the tens of thousands. I used to work for a state and my work involved rural property access. In 41 1/2 years the only property I could not get access to under any circumstances was an Appalachian ridge wind farm. Legally they had to let me in, but the policy was not to push. I am fairly certain they hadn’t cleaned up the dead birds.
1. Hybrid power plants (using both wind and solar) 2. More offshore than onshore winf turbines 3. Coloring the wind blades so as to avoid bird strikes. 4. Finding ways to reduce the use of diesel or petrol in construction and installation of wind farms. Inr way can be using wind turbines or solar panels for constructing newer turbines and/or panels. 5. Pyrolysis is one way to reduce landfilling. The easiest manner is the use of wind turbines in cement production as well as road construction. Their are claims being made now that we have found ways to profitably extract resins from wind turbines in an electricity positive manner.
“Costs are coming down…” because taxation is going up as a result of government interference in the natural law of supply and demand: 1. We (politicians) want people to use wind turbines. 2. People are not voluntarily using wind turbines, because they’re expensive. 3. We will tax the people more, and subsidize our cronies to sell wind turbines.
The life-span of wind turbines is proving to be less than expected. Location and the elements they are exposed to in certain locations are a big factor. They last about 20 to 25 years. That’s it. Can you imagine building a fossil fuel power plant and then tearing it down in 20 or 25 years to build an entire new plant to replace it? Of course not. What gets done with the blades when they have deteriorated beyond use? How much fossil fuels is used to build and construct the turbines? A LOT of fossil fuels used to transport, destroy, and burn the blades. There are a lot of “inconvenient truths” you need to acknowledge.
I wish you might have looked into the adverse effects of low frequency vibrations on farms. I’ve seen a small study where farmers were losing their livestock and even the families had to move away because of serious ailments. Seems the vibrations were causing the livestock to become ill and unable to reproduce and the farmers were unable to sleep and came down with unexplained ailments.
“Cost are coming down all them time with many governments now offering more incentives to encourage more uptick.” If you are referring to the incentives being the reason why they are “cheaper”, then this statement would not be correct. The government just subsidizes some of the cost of the wind turbines, this does not make them cheaper is it just that an enterprise has to pay less to install them. The rest of the cost is still there but is covered by the government. I know it is a nagging statement but it is important that to understand, that just because somebody else covers part of the cost of something, that this would in turn make it “cheaper”. Imagine if you want to buy a bun for 0.50 Cents and I give you 0.25 Cent. That does not mean the bun is “cheaper”, somebody else just covered 50% of cost so it “appears cheaper”. Ultimately prices will only really get lower when the market would increase production while demand stays about the same or does not grow in the same manner as production does.
By the time you figure cost to produce and install a turbine, cost of the land to set it up, verses the amount of generation, it is expensive. NOW, you have to decide how to dispose of old ones, which is another story. Just the carbon footprint of building, installing and maintaining is very high. A professor at UCSD a few years ago calculated the wind farm out by Palm Springs, and said the cost per kilowatt of electricity was three times higher than buying it from Southern California Edison. Wind is not the renewable energy source people think. I heard one time and scientist working on new energy source make the comment, ” Until this new source can be put on a 747 and fly from LA to New York, its not a dependable energy source.”
“So, yes, maybe wind power does come with more downsides that many of us first realized.” That is because “many of us” don’t listen. All of these issues were brought up 50 years ago. Next time, maybe “many of us” should wait until after these issues have been solved before making these sorts of mistakes and leaving it up to others to figure out how to fix them, while patting yourselves on the back for being so unquestionably righteous.
Here’s the downsides. Plenty of them. Turbines don’t belong en-mass out in the sea. NJ USA is planning up to 5000 turbines in farms with some 150 substations… in total containing some 35Million gallons of hazardous fluids and 3.5Million pounds of SF6 (most potent GHG known to humanity, with a warming potential 23,900 times that of carbon dioxide (CO2) and atmospheric residence of up to 3,200 years.)… those fluids leaking and at risk to dumping into the sea en-mass with a natural disaster or military conflict. The are NOT Green, NOT Safe, NOT low cost energy. In fact, European citizens report to us that their electric rates went up 2-3x. The installation process in NJ puts them only 10-15 miles offshore in prime fishing, clamming and scallop grounds. Total destruction of these fisheries is expected due to disturbance of the ground from the installing the bases as well as the maze of connecting cables. And after installation, the choking of all living creatures will continue with constant silt generation to tidal currents moving around the bases of the turbines. Photos of such silt generation is observable at sites that have been installed. Further, NJ has no made apparent the “take charts”, which are the declarations by the installers of potentially how many marine mammals the prospecting and installation is EXPECTED to “kill”. NJ plays dumb that it doesn’t know why our whales and dolphins are washing up on the shore during the seismic testing of the seabed. They know why, they approved it.
I am not an engineer, but my two best friends are both power engineers. They both tell me that wind turbine energy is mostly a joke and only political motivation keeps it alive. They have lengthy explanations for their stance, but I can’t articulate it in this space. I am curious so I watch these articles to find out what I can. Additionally, I read extensively on the topic. The jury is out and we will not know in our lifetimes whether wind is the way to go.
I’m glad we are starting to have grown-up discussions about renewable energy. I am pro wind and solar.. to a point. Now that we are having these grown-up discussions, it’s important to note that nuclear has the smallest environmental footprint of all electrical generation sources per unit of energy. Especially when the infrastructure needed is factured in (extra transmission lines, batteries, etc).
I’m from germany and PLEASE do take us as a negative example! Keep your nuclear energy, build new, 3rd generation reactors that can use up nuclear waste and reduce its radioactivity from tens of thousands of years to a couple of hundreds. Keep them until fission reactors are feasible and sure… build some wind turbines, support solar roofs and hydrogen generation from excess capacity, but don’t plaster your countryside in wind turbines that are killing off wildlife and reducing quality of life through their rhythmic pressure waves that are shaking up buildings! We’re now paying the highest energy prices in the world, save for a few island nations. It is driving away our industry, throttling digital development and EV flourishing. Our grid is more unstable than ever, leaving factories with blackouts and all that for a ‘green’ illusion!
Some years ago I came to a similar problem with a manifold of an air seeder where the seeds travelling at some speed in an air duct had to change direction to be distributed into 5 or 6 secondary ducts and to avoid smashing them we used a thin layer of poly eurathane on the surface . It also stopped the erosion of the detector that was counting the impulses of seeds passing that point. It could be used on the blade leading edge if coated thinly and with a smooth finish so as no to add drag.
Matt overlooks the fact that Wind turbines are efficient in a very limited range of wind speed. Most turbines will generate power starting at 3-5ms but at that speed electric generation id nominal at best. The ideal speed for a turbine is 12-16 ms and at 25 ms turbines have to be shut down as they can’t handle that speed. When considering the short life span of a wind turbine, the inconsistent power generated and the cost to build and remove, wind turbines barely produce enough clean energy to offset the amount CO2 that was used to build them.
So this massive project in uk only provided 5% of energy – the future is 4th generation nuclear that’s ‘walk away safe’, has about 95% less waste (that only lasts 300 years, not thousands of years), can actually run from old nuclear waste (where only 2% of fuel was used), is low pressure (so doesn’t need massive containment vessels), is cheap to build
Matt, I think your analysis has been extremely generous to wind power by omitting a major environmental truth.. In Europe (and I’m sure elsewhere) we often experience high pressure weather systems which result in low wind speeds and no power generated. During these conditions back-up power is required from other generation sources. This requires additional plant to be constructed and this is often hot-spinning reserve (fossil fuel). Even if this hot-spinning reserve was displaced by battery storage solutions it is still adding additional construction environmental footprint (ecological, carbon-footprint from concrete, and substantial earth resources for batteries).
Wind turbines were built all around my rural home….when I moved here there were none. I can tell you this: I hate them. I hate living near them. I’m up right now 11pm and I can hear the one they built closest to my house…INSIDE my house. I moved here and built an energy efficient 900 square foot house. It was my dream. I had found heaven in the peaceful, rural atmosphere. Now the horizons look dystopic….dotted with hundreds of giant white, spinning, noisy machines. It used to be just the sound of the birds and breeze in the trees….now I seldom have a single day without the noisy turbine, steadily strumming away…it’s LOUD. They get tax breaks, meanwhile my property taxes went up over 70% in one year after the turbines were built within sight of my house! Talk about insult to injury. Yes. I absolutely hate the #blattnerenergy turbines here in #millscountytexas I hope for their destruction every single day.
How about stopping the madness of destroying our landscapes, our fishing grounds and our bird populations by using a reliable, stable, and safe energie source. Until nuclear energy is back on the agenda, governments are not serious about ‘fighting climate change’. If that’s a sensible goal is another discussion alltogether.
Are you “still” thinking about it? Have you watched the article, “Windfall?” Did you research “operations and upkeep” costs? Why is Europe quickly abandoning their turbines? How many gallons of hydraulic oil, specialized maintenance, and easement maintenance are required per turbine? Why should all taxpayers fund these if they are supposed to provide “free” energy? What is their real ROI? (Not calculated by a government agency which are biased toward use.) Who pays for decommissioning? How many acres of American farmland would be decommissioned from food production so that city-dwellers can have more energy?
Let’s put the issue of disposing of turbine blades into perspective: Less than 0.150 g of blade material must be disposed of or recycled per kWh generated over the lifetime of the wind turbine. That compares to over 150 g of natural gas used per kWh by a gas-fired power plant, and 412 g of CO2 emitted. The numbers speak for themselves!
Great work as ever Matt, a couple of things that I think will build on your article. Bird deaths – Whilst it is sad that 500,000 birds are killed by wind turbines in the USA each year, glass covered buildings in the USA kill up to 1 BILLION birds per year. So whilst some like to say it’s the turbines that are reducing bird populations, it’s more likely that it’s the love of glass sided buildings. SOURCE theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/07/how-many-birds-killed-by-skyscrapers-american-cities-report Also again I agree that decommissioning the blades is currently an issue, it is one that we will work out in time. Also it has been noted in Europe that blades are lasting LONGER than predicted, which is actually causing issues in the market, as windfarms that were meant to be decommisioned are still running! SOURCE windpowermonthly.com/article/1683023/calls-scrap-danish-turbine-limit Finally if you really care about birds, don’t buy a cat SOURCE eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/29/cats-wild-birds-mammals-study/1873871/ Looking forward to your next article, subscribed, notified and commented 🙂
Could we add factors such as: Berkshire Hathaway pays 12bn for a wind farm and gets 10bn in subsidies… or what economic impacts are seen to homeowners and land owners in rural areas (or rural communities near Omaha) such as exodus of new homes, declining land and home values, impacts on quality of life, livestock, and generational farms.
when I retired in 2010 the US was talking about Green energy and wind turbines…but I had never seen one and already there was a lot of push back on where to put them… Until I moved to China. There, one of my first impressions was the number of wind turbines everywhere and how far advanced the Chinese were in that technology!
So overall I support wind power and have even worked in the wind industry as a turbine technician, but please don’t kid yourself. Wind power in no way is completely clean. If you hate the use of oil, well guess what? Turbines use oil for the tur one gearbox, and they can spill? I wasn’t the cause of the issue, but I was responsible for helping to clean a leaked turbine oil spill, that unfortunately did leak out of the turbine and damage the crops of the farmers land on which it was located. I won’t say this is common, but it does happen.
Hey Matt, you said the pyrolosys of the old fibreglass blades is inefficient because it requires power… but… if that power is also provided by a turbine, then it becomes VERY efficient! I’d advise being careful about saying the use of power is automatically ‘not green’. It’s all about how we generate the power, isn’t it?!
I’m starting to believe that if we successfully stop what is being labeled as climate change, we’re going to regret it. The changing of climate is part of what makes Earth a living planet. I also believe that if mankind disappeared overnight, the climate would continue to do what it’s been doing anyway. Just my opinion.
Please keep in mind the graph shown at 1:42, is only for electrical energy produced and not total energy produced. Of total energy produced wind is sitting around 2%. This data is also only comprehensive of reporting countries. Countries that are developing (ie most countries in Africa,South America and parts of Asia) almost get no power from wind so that 2% number is much less.
Ok Matt, first I gave you a thumbs up on this article and I subscribed some time ago… so hopefully I’m on your good side. Second, the information has always been informative… it just doesn’t get to page two all the time. So I’d like to make some comments on this article. – Personally I find wind turbines unsightly. A perfectly beautiful landscape or view of the ocean disrupted by this huge wind generator. Horrible – recycling the generators and all components… you did hit the point on the trucks and energy going to get them to take to recycling centers… great point. – wooden wind machine? Trees cut, land destroyed, grazing lands now for cows and more methane? recycled wood for composite materials… doesn’t this equate to more windmills to generate the same amount of power? – half a million birds killed? Where’s the Audubon Society now (I know they’re involved, does anyone else know?). The birds play a huge part of the eco system… the “Green” movement is not too worried of that are they? – the ocean eco system being changed by man… the turbines all the way out to 60km out to sea? CO2 is man made. Taking away or adding to is “anthropogenic”… we’re not consistent here… – finally, and no one even talks about this… wind is energy correct, tides have energy… When a wind turbine or tidal turbine is in operation it is taking that energy out of the flow and on the downwind side or down range of the tide direction there is less energy… less airflow or current. Why is this important.
I worked for Vestas, one of the largest wind turbine companies in the world. We would have to wait at times six to eight hours for a work break or lunch. The shifts were 12 hours long with mandatory overtime that went on for months. I left the company. I don’t know what working conditions are like now. A worker died there when a heavy piece of equipment fell on him.
The big problem is the turbines aren’t living up to their expected life blade are being replace after a couple years and whole wind farms are being destroyed with explosives before their useful life expectancy !Remember they only make power when the wind blows, if you only. Look at wind mills as green energy and don’t look at the cost to manufacture erect and the dismantle I would say they wind mills are cost affective when they never make it to their expected life expectancy !A gas fire power plant produces more power and make more power for longer when you need a sustainable energy source that doesn’t depend on the wind or sunshine!
The used blades could be a valuable low-cost building material. Great examples of the playground, bus stops and footbridge. Maybe use for shade awnings or highway walls. I’d think architects could come up with many creative uses if they had a good source of obtaining smaller blade sections easily. An online database of dimensions and purchasing sources could expand this creative recycling.
really all the listed “negatiives” are the same for other sources of power, cables, roads, transmission etc. – so it not adding to the overall impact of power production. Wanna save the birds – (i do) – keep your cats indoors – in the US alone – they kill between 1.3 Billion and 4 Billion birds a year -yes that’s Billion – not to mention all the other animals they kill – and that is even higher – pound for pound the most effective killer on the planet – love them, but they are killers by nature – read here nature.com/articles/ncomms2380
Everything has an environmental impact. But even though the environment is very fragile, it’s also very flexible and it’s regenerative, so it heals constantly. As long as the negative environmental impacts are relatively small, it doesn’t really matter in the long run. I have found that many people see a negative impact of something and immediately are against it, even though it is a way better alternative than anything else. Thank you Matt for this article where you point out the positives and negatives!
I would have hoped that when you mentioned concrete, diesel, landscaping, service roads, cabling, converter stations and so on, you had pointed out that all other means of creating energy needs same infrastructure often in much greater scale. One example is our fifth nuclear reactor (Olkiluoto 3) in Finland. It has been built since 2005 and it still not complete. While not producing any CO2 when operational, it can hardly be seen as totally emission free either. And uranium, oil, coal, natural gas doesn´t just appear next to power plant like wind and sun does. They need mining, drilling, transporting and refining and tons of additional infrastructure and energy to be ready to use. You can even add thousands of people commuting to do all that to equation. Or decommissioning and recycling parts from traditional power plants or problems related used nuclear fuel. I would say that new tech wins every time. I bet you know all this and I hope you made a article about truly comparing environmental impacts of different ways to produce energy. Pointing out ones downsides seems a bit unfair.
The statement that the blades “are strong enough to withstand even the harshest conditions without damage and maintenance” is/was not true. Many of them have damage on the leading edge which makes them aerodynamicaly compromised and less efficient,in a lot of cases 20% less. (Fiberglass ones,untill recently.) Apparently, new compounds and carbon-fiber ones have lot less issues but are also more expensive. Also the blades are quite dangerous to big birds,eagles in particular as they often look at them for places to perch and are too slow to evade them. You also failed to mention their bigest shortcoming,energy storage,or what to do when they produce more energy then what can be used,or sometimes even more than what can be transported through the grid. And that happens very often (rarely do we have high winds exactly at two daily peaks of consumption,same as solar)making them even less effecient. All nations with high wind energy production have some of the highest prices of energy (some of it taxes) and the pattern is:more wind- higher prices. Current changes in wind-speeds all over the planet (more extremes,low wind or very high wind) do not bode well for wind turbines as they work only in the middle range,so climate change may contribute to them being even less productive then as calculated by previous wind patterns. And alternative energy has higher capitalisation than oil industry. P.S. So far,I have NEVER seen a fervent proponent of electric cars that : — lives in a building appartement in the city –has less then 50k a year That’s about half the population.
Nice analysis. While you did acknowledge some downsides, and have reasonable hope for some improvement, I feel some important gaps were made. For example, if we did cover all our coasts with wind turbines world wide, would that alone provide a stable source of power? (Is enough wind always blowing?) If not, the cost of storage to grab the peaks and fill in the lows with a base load needs to be factored into the cost of wind. The fact that the sun isn’t always shining and the wind isn’t always blowing is one of the reasons it is tough to increase this type of “green energy”. I also think the environmental impact is understated. Sure the clams might be happy, eating bits of dead birds falling from the sky, but can you imagine what surrounding all of our shores with windmills would do to all migratory and sea birds? It would be terrible to do all this and one day realize that we dramatically overstated our fraction of the impact to the environment, or underestimated the many costs going green had and that maybe natural gas wasn’t so bad. Hydroelectric, especially from dams, are a great stable base load, but the environmentalists are pushing to remove them all. That’s not smart. Nuclear is also dismissed too easily. If green is so great, why is Germany burning more coal and natural gas, and paying higher electric rates than France? One reason seems to be nuclear. The US has been running small nuclear reactors on submarines and super carriers for decades.That’s nearly a hundred reactors floating around in a variety of sea conditions without a reactor caused complete failure.
I’ve got an idea; how about smaller turbines for houses, because solar panels for homes is difficult (roof material needs to be replaced much more often than solar panels, and then it cost thousands more when the solar panels need to be removed and replaced again, also shade trees usually come with houses, so cutting down trees goes along with residential solar). Those new fangled winter vines that look like a rectangle (doesn’t look like a windmill), might be a good way to go. I have never heard noise from a wind turbine, but I get that it could be undesirable in a residential neighborhood. You would think with modern technology they could make quiet ones.
Matt, I love all the perspective and stories you bring to the table but this time you miss out on putting the down side in perspective. Some grafs and numbers are requered also to compair all the effects you discuss with other forms of energy production. I think you would have found that the fosil fuels used to construct and deconstruct modern turbins are minimal.
Good article. You need to compare the alternatives-with coal you get horrible impact from the mining of it, air pollution from the burning of it, and then coal ash(with heavy metals) at the end(I personally would much rather have turbine blades buried near me than coal ash). Also, I am from an area that contains an old oil field. There are still areas where plants do not grow after 80 years due to the release of salt water. There are still wells producing, but these bring up polluted salt water with the oil. This water must be pumped back in the ground nowadays. If these “disposal” wells get a leak, guess what happens to your ground water and your water wells! Wind and solar have problems, but are better than this.
I just finished this article. The one unmentioned repercussion not mentioned is the resistance of the blades and generator’s effect of the overall wind/weather pattern and climate change that will occur because of it. Sure it is small but look what water can do to stone over a period of time. I would be interested in your opinion.
What about our grid system being AC? My understanding is that we produce electricity on a as needed basis since you can’t store AC. Wind turbines only work when the wind blows, not necessarily when I’m needing it. Until we have massive storage systems there will always be a need to produce electricity from another source when the wind isn’t blowing.
Hi all just a message just posted this on some windfarm sites thought it was worth adding to this page So. If you grind up old wind farm blades both glass and carbonfiber and add then to wet concrete at the batching plant i can see a real risk issue can you?,,,,, Well its 30yrs later and the slab is to be crushed up for the new development to get made what happens with the rubble ? and more worryingly the dust. We have seen this before with a product that was loved in its day and ended killing thousands it to was mixed into concrete as sheets got were i am going yet NO ASBESTOSIS disease a man made issue rearing its head again will we ever learn from the past?
To quote Doomberg, when it comes to generation and energy technologies “There are no solutions, only trade-offs”. I work in the generation business and I can affirm that this view is correct, there is no one generation technology that is perfect and some of the so-called green technologies can have quite detrimental effects that we need to properly weigh up in making our energy choices.
I like the tact you took in this article and reasonable discussion of pro and con. I’ve been pro wind power since the 70s when my uncle built his own wind turbines on his farm, decades before it was fashionable. He knew, however that to work, the grid had to be there to smooth things out. How come we can’t have more reasoned debate regarding fossil fuels to acknowledge all the good they’ve done, and also what we can do to mitigate their downsides. Instead too often all we get is demonization, and ridicule of anyone that sees any benefits of fossil fuels….
Do a segment on HAWT, horizontal axis wind turbines. NOT grid worthy but a power source for midsize farm small farm and urban niche uses. Rural power for small/mid irrigation pumps for nongrid remote power. Urban for niche power like lighting in parks, fountains, bike recharging stations, exterior building and sidewalk lights, using and cutting the wind force between tall buildings. Much more bird-friendly, can be ornamental with crisscrossing C or S or O shaped blades. All of the works close to ground for repairs. Good kicker for full offgrid battery solar too.
I’m genuinely surprised by some of the negative commentary. This article does an excellent job of presenting both sides as well as outlining the mitigations and solutions that address the downsides. I would have liked to see one more aspect covered in more depth, namely the massive environmental damage that wind power displaces. Over its 20 year lifespan (a conservative estimate since 1980’s vintage wind turbines were still operational at Altamont Pass Wind Farm until recently), a single 5 MW onshore wind turbine will generate as much electricity as mining, transporting, and disposing of the toxic ash residue from burning 150,000 TONS* of coal. That 5 MW wind turbine also eliminates about 25,000 TONS of toxic coal ash, 750 TONS of sulfur dioxide, 300 TONS of nitrous oxide, and 30 TONS of particulates Even if none of the wind power downsides were addressed, they’re still a net gain for the environment compared to its fossil fueled competitors which it displaces. To top it off, coal pollution is estimated to kill 25 people per TWh of electricity generated. In other words, each 5 MW wind turbine can save 7 to 8 lives from needless coal pollution deaths.* * It takes roughly one pound of coal to generate 1 kWh of electricity. U.S. wind turbines average about 35% capacity factor even with older, smaller, lower capacity factor wind turbines averaged in. 5 MW x 0.35 x 8766 hours/year x 20 years = 300 million kWh 300 million kWh x 1 pound coal/kWh x 1 ton/2,000 pounds = ~150,000 tons of coal 300 million kWh = 300 GWh = 0.
1 kg of coal = 6 hours running a washing machine. Available 24/7 1 kg of oil. = 9 hours running a washing machine . Available 24/7 1 kg of wind and solar equivalent = less than 1 hour running a washing machine. Available only when the sun is shinning and the wind is blowing. Nominally 30% of the time. 1 kg of uranium = 2000 years running a washing machine. Available 24/7. WARNING – The washing machine may not last 2000 years. I wonder which power source is more efficient.
When does the wind farm recover the overall cost of the installation? You mentioned the installation cost but where is the cost and future value of real estate? There has never been a decrease in energy cost to consumers. Just recently the weather forecast is saying 100mph plus winds are expected in the midwest states and costal winds during hurricanes can have gusts up to 150mph. Can they survive that? I do appreciate a platform like yours to bring these question to because I don’t have the time to research these things from reliable sources while weeding through people who made up or parrot something they heard from “green” fanatics.
In my opinion, as a plant physiologist, the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions ( NB carbon is an element carbon dioxide is a compound one very different from the other) is false. The majority of green plants are carbon dioxide starved and would benefit from an increase in CO2, that is why greenhouse managers increase levels by 2-3 times ambient for increased yields and improved water use efficiency.
I couldn’t help but notice that there was no mention about the process of dealing with the worn blades from the wind mills in the ocean. Shall we take a guess as to where those are ending up? I hear a lot of talk about the ‘cradle-to-grave’ carbon footprint of electric vehicles, but not so much about the ‘cradle-to-grave’ carbon footprint of these windmills.
The more I watch your articles, the more I see you as an advocate and an idealist rather than a practitioner. I give you credit for at least acknowledging some of the downsides. However, I think you underestimate the impacts of the downsides and the magnitude of the difficulty of ongoing operation and maintenance of turbine farms.
I just find it hard to believe that with the cost of the turbine, transport, installation, maintenance, and property lease that the income generated will EVER make it a profitable entity WITHOUT government subsidies. Then take into consideration of demolition and disposal costs and it is a losing game. 30 years from now we will see many abandoned turbines in random states of decay!
I live in the Meadow Lake wind farm area, which is 4th largest in the United States with over 800MW and the turbines are everywhere. I have seen the growth since 2008 and haven’t had a single complaint, except one. There hasn’t been tragedy that I know of resulting from these massive fans and they are far from an eyesore in the boring flatlands of northwest Indiana. The only complaint I have is that the energy efficiency doesn’t seem to save anybody any money on their bill and we are about to see a spike in our bill in the undesirable direction. This being my only complaint says a lot against the terrible narrative a large wind farm usually receives. Even after 13 years of seeing them, for some reason they do not get old to watch them rotate and collect electrons!
They are horrible to the environment really, especially in countries with mostly a power surplus. The negative effects are destruction of habitats by creating miles of roads, and platforms for the turbines. Pollution by glass fiber, plastic and gear oil. Pollution in waterways. Killing of wildlife, insects, birds, bats etc.
Good presentation on the topic of wind power. I did not hear mention of two variables. Dependability: The wind does not always blow, and a wind farm at sea would need to withstand hurricane force winds… and the capacity to capture and store that level of energy. Transportability: Some areas do not have a stable source of wind, or if so, the land needed to capture the wind power. Wind energy may need to be sent over long distances where it may be subject to attenuation. I am asking out of my own inexperience in hopes of better understanding the challenges of improving the use of wind power.
Wind farms can alter local climates by extracting kinetic energy from the wind, reducing wind speeds and diminishing the capacity to transport heat and moisture. This can result in hotter areas and reduced rainfall for inland regions, potentially causing droughts and agricultural challenges. Research has confirmed that large-scale offshore wind farms can significantly affect sea surface climates, reducing air-sea heat fluxes and altering local weather patterns.
Infra- sound from wind turbines is a real health and wellness issue and more study is needed in this area. Wind provides constant power, when the wind is blowing but not too fast, yet not reliable for on-demand peak power. Better storage technology (batteries) is need for wind to be anything more than a Ponzi scheme.
Thinking that renewable matters at all is a mistake. The goals should be energy security, affordability and environmental protection without regard to being called RE or not. It’s clear for a lot of reasons that dilute intermittents are unsuitable to do the heavy lifting of meeting our energy needs if these are our goals.
After working for one of the biggest manufacturers for over a decade, I can honestly say, most people have zero clue as to their function and durability. The only ‘downside’ is our blades. Not sure why some private company hasn’t found a way to turn them into insulation or something, but give it time.
The bit about it affecting birds…cats kill way more than that a year. As for the end of life of the turbines, in the UK we are re using the old towers with new, higher power, turbines. There are barriers but when coal was introduced, do you think that didn’t have problems? Benefits outweigh the setbacks.
Thanks for the presentation. Cases that are poorly covered and that are not included in the licensing process here. Amount of released bisphenol from leaf wings per year, and weigh construction through bogs, with released CO2. Nor serious noise consequences, does not seem to be taken seriously here in my country.
A simple solution bird strike is currently being assessed. It is just painting one of the blades another color, ie black. The flicker in colors is enough to scare off birds, in the daytime. Not much help for bats … . I read an article about the people-wind generator interface. The Germans created a new law defining minimum distances to people. The problem was that there were a couple of towns that had paid for their own wind farms. The people nearest to the these wind mills did NOT have problems with noise (probably due to the specific design of those windmills). But, the law forced the town to remove a bunch of the windmills because they were too close to people, who were not complaining … There was no wiggle room in the law.
Industry estimates project an annual output of 30-40%, but real-world experience shows that annual outputs of 15-30% of capacity are more typical per National Wind Watch…… In all actuality if it were not for the Government subsidies, no private industry would invest with such a low production rate. just my opinion
I find it mildly annoying that we discuss the environmental impact of building and disposing of wind turbines, without noting that the main alternative, a natural gas fired generator station is at least as carbon-intensive to build, far more carbon-intensive to run, and again, at least as carbon-intensive to decommission. Because that is, really, the only interesting question: what are the alternatives? And what are the costs associated with those alternatives? I’m sure there’s a formal Latin name for the fallacy involved, but I can’t place it at the moment. Anyway, I thought you did a good job with the discussion.
For the same cost, a Nuclear power plant can be built that will produce power 24/7 for 60 to 100 years. The blades are environmentally inpossible to be recycled with todays technologies. What ever you say, a wind turbine cannot produce electricity 24/7 and their lifespan is often less than 50% of what is claimed.
Nice analysis, drawing attention to little seen problems. Unfortunately like many such it still mainly considers wind impacts from the framework of a hobby power source, instead of looking hard at the impact of wind scaled to supply the vast energy needs of the US, and reliably. For instance, it’s rare to see consideration of what the unmatched Atlantic cyclone will do to an east coast supplied nearly all by offshore wind. The topic doesn’t come up, because many imagine that the ‘real’ gas and coal power plants will always be there. Further it’s imagined that a cyclone would do, what, knock down a few turbines, little noticed. But there are already examples from reality. The PR storm Maria hit the windward wind farm there, *onshore*. Maria didn’t loosen a few blades, bend one tower. It obliterated every single wind turbine, and that with no offshore 30M wave action. Such a storm rolling up the US coast could wipe out the majority East coast power, for years. Set aside the violence of storms and look at simple seasonal wind variation. While the east coast has great average wind resource, everyone working in those waters also knows that in early Sept or late Aug the coast can turn into a hot, windless, jelly fish infested flat bathtub for a week or two for a thousand miles of coast. Again, if the plan is unserious, hiding all the existing fossil fuel plants behind the curtain, then a couple weeks of no wind is no problem. The other mentions here of some garage shop solution, such as blades into pellets or into Danish park benches are, sorry, unserious.
At last! A decent perspective on this whole issue. I’m so sick of these anti-renewables articles and all my non-technical friends getting up in arms because someone decides to shout their mouth off about one side of a coin. These articles always omit the fossil-fuel alternative figures to get the same amount of energy over so many years. When you look at it in it’s full perspective, renewables win hands-down every time! I’m an industrial electronics designer. Been in the game for many years. I know the score. It just makes me sad to see people fighting and yelling at each other this stuff when we could be looking at all forms of energy with an balanced and objective viewpoint. Renewables, unfortunately, have become a money-game. Why did they start using composites? Money! Pure and simple. They could have made them out of anything. But the manufacturers of renewables don’t give a damn about the environment. They are just selling a product. Renewables are not evil, they are just often badly designed or applied. I’m glad to see there are improvements. Using wood and finding ways to recycle the composites. At the end of the day, nothing is a silver bullet. Any method of generating energy will have some environmental impact. You’re never going to get around that.
Utilities may not “generate” the equivalent power that is displaced while a wind farm is producing, however they are still burning fuel and making steam to near capacity so they can power up the steam driven turbines quickly as the wind drops below 15-20 km/hr. Otherwise brownouts would be much more common. Check out what happens to all the industrial systems driven by computer failures when brownouts occur. Extreme waste/cost. Its a big lie that windmills “work”.
Overall a pretty fair summary of the pros and cons of wind power. A couple of other things that need to be considered, impact on wildlife and the need for “backup” power generation. Wind farms have a very negative impact on bird and bat populations and it is unknown if the low-frequency noise has a long-term impact on marine life. And as the people of Texas know all too well Wind Farms don’t produce electricity all the time (not windy enough, too windy, ice build-up on blades, etc…) so you need some kind of reliable backup power generation. Nuclear can’t be turned on and off quickly, Solar is even more unreliable so you are looking at fossil fuels again. If you want a stable power grid for every MegaWatt of wind energy you will need an equal amount of fossil fuel energy on standby. This increases the cost of electricity to the customer, doubles the power footprint, and doesn’t lower the carbon footprint that much if at all.
Yes and off shore windpower or in general has the ability to slow storms down protecting property which also brings in a value. Also thex mix hotter ground air with cooler air from higher up and thereby lowering temperatures on the ground on hot summer days. That’s measurable up to 50km behind a wind turbine
As regards nuke power the molten salt thorium reactors holds promise and is being used in India as a recycling method for waste from their main reactor. I must admit not much current information heard from there. Recycling of waste containing plutonium is very comforting as no pilfering attempts would be made with useless leftovers from the thorium reactors
Hi Matt….I noticed that that you didn’t discuss the most important aspect of Wind Power…Wind Power is not a continuous form of energy. There would be unpredictable blocks of downtime. Likewise with Solar energy there is a problem with clouds and after the Sun goes down. To employ these forms of energy you must have a back-up power source ready to go. Until we get an effective way to store energy Wind Farms and Solar Panel Arrays are worthless. To build them is too expensive for their unpredictable power return. To say Wind is showing itself to be a cheap form of energy is ignoring the fact that the wind doesn’t blow all the time.
It should be noted that many of the turbines installed in California are still working and only now are some being replaced with more efficient ones. We must also look at the energy and decommissioning demands of other energy sources. Nuclear decommissioning is eye watering expensive, takes years and lots of the material can never be recycled. Nuclear uses massive amounts of steel and concrete. Hydro is a concrete makers dream order. It often has significant wildlife impact and sinks land underwater forever. The oil and gas platforms offshore are so expensive to remove that most O+G want to leave them there as “fishlife refuges” in order to avoid the real bill and they make steel makers fortunes with the metal difficult to cut up both offshore and onshore. This ignores oil and gas emissions and leaks onto land and sea plus the vast pipelines needed to move the fuels. Solar is much the same as wind but it cannot be put offshore at any scale. Birdlife loss is happening at a massive rate due to climate change not a few windmills (compared to the other carbon emiitting power sources). Nobody wants an oil refinery, oil rig or gas storage neat them either. As for coal and its legacy well if its not coalminer lung then its emissions are even more lethal and your’re left with a near useless hole in the ground next to a power plant that has no value apart from scrap assuming the operator has not sought bankruptcy as a means of avoiding the cleanup costs and the sick worker claims/pensions
What are the environmental and climate impacts of extracting gigawatts of energy from seasonal and onshore winds that create our weather. Without the mythical & elusive energy storage. When the sun goes down and the wind abates we still need conventional generation large enough to carry the entire load or it is lights out.
Wind is free. Vertical blades are used to some extent. Sail boat airodynamics and technology come into play as they are being developed along highways to power lit road signs and lighting. Massive towers are not needed with these. They can vary in height and diameter as amp draw vary to need. Generators are at bottom of structure for ease of maintenance. Yard art models are available to admire and understand simple concept.
also existing research shows that wind farms decrease local wind speeds (14,15). The wake propagation distance of large onshore wind farms is concentrated in the range of 10–30 km (15,27), so wind speed changes over longer distances are very weak. Oceans are producing oxygen. Without the proper wind movement there won’t be any flowers, trees and oxygen required from the ocean movement
Has somebody done true CO2, etc numbers created in the process of creating raw materials, construction, transportation, installation, and other costs related to placing turbines, solar panels, and other alternative energy sources? I also question the amount of energy and CO2 created in making and operating EVs. It would be handy to have these calculations to compare them to alternatives to develop a method to capture CO2, methane, etc by newer methods, and cleaner cars. I also question how much pollution would be removed if we make smaller sized engines.
Wind power is ONLY “cost effective” as long as it can parasite on already existing power generation when the wind is weak ! So, the question is how much wind power can a grid cope with until it gets unstable if not something else is supporting the wind power. This something else, will add costs to wind power. Only then, it is comparable with for example nuclear power or planable power generation.
I hesitated going to a article that may not agree 100% with how I view it, but sometimes you gotta check what you believe with better knowledge. I had to learn that myself. My two cents, imo I feel as if regardless of the initial start costs in both currency and pollution, I believe that renewables is still a net benefit for most bodies of this planet.
To produce a wind turbine, the turbine must spin continually for 7 years just to replace the energy it took to produce it. And it must run non stop for 38 years to make enough energy to pay for the cost it took to manufacture it. (not including transportation to the sight, set up or maintenance) Current life expectancy is 20 years It requires 80 gallons of oil per year to lubricate a turbine. Turbine blades are made from toxic fiberglass and never break down. Currently, they are taken to a landfill in Wyoming, after they’ve outlived their usefulness.
Birds will eventually learn to avoid the turbines in time, through behavioral learning. Like the ducks in my city and most cities/town where I’m from for example. People have given way to them when they cross roads so much over the last few decades, even busy ones. That they’re the only bird, make that wild animal inhabiting the suburbs that doesn’t understand cars are dangerous. Heck they’ll even walk out in front of a cyclist. I nearly rode into one and it didn’t even flinch. They’ll walk under the back wheel of a long truck and after seeing it. The second duck will run up to the roadkill in complete shock. Which tends to result in a Double Kill half the time. Now compare that to the same species of ducks that inhabits locations near highways and rural roads with frequent traffic. They don’t even bother trying to walk across. It’s fly or die. So your options are: 1. Adding an obstacle to their migration journey that they will eventually learn to overcome . It may take a decade too spread through the population. But it’ll happen. Most birds are smart. OR 2. Through inaction, cause long term global environmental damage to various ecosystems around the world. One of those being the fertile wet lands of migratory birds. Which after thousands of years has begun drying out to the point that it becomes vulnerable to a wildfire, which is what eventually finishes it off. Along with the other animals that lived there, year round.
Was there mention of the regular poor output from wind power. The UK wind fleet at 20:38 today is almost zero megawatts, as is the nation’s solar fleet. The drawbacks are not just material disposal. Either way I enjoyed the article for the material that was presented, albeit overlooking a critical and major issue.