
Research suggests wind energy may have serious consequences for the environment - propman
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-10-04/wind-power-isn-t-as-clean-as-we-thought-it-was?srnd=premium
======
blunte
Early proponents of any new technology usually overestimate the benefits,
while established players tend to downplay or even intentionally distort the
conversation to reduce the threat to their existing business or political
models.

There's no question that everything we do has some impact. It's more important
to try to understand that impact relative to alternatives.

For example, concerning ourselves with the temperature increase near wind
farms without comparing to the (just local) temperature impact of traditional
power plants leaves one with the impression that wind farms must be bad
because they raise temps. What is the temperature impact near a coal
powerplant?

And while not a direct competitor, we know the regional temperature impact of
pavement in cities (like Dallas for example) is extreme. So build more public
transport, reducing need for cars which reduces fossil fuel use (which
increases temps) and reduces need for roads (which absorb heat all day and
radiate it at night, raising average temps).

I'm trying to avoid claiming that these studies may be funded by traditional
energy players, but I have strong suspicions.

~~~
AstralStorm
The main problem with wind is material cost. The steel and aluminium do not
make themselves and turbines don't maintain themselves either.

The density has known limitations.

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peteretep
> This figure implies that meeting current U.S. electricity needs [entirely
> from wind alone] would require wind farms to cover fully 12 percent of the
> U.S. land area

This seems like an almighty straw man, without even beginning to point out
that a wind turbine doesn't preclude other land usage.

~~~
sidhuko
You can't live close to a wind turbine as large as they are being built today.
At least not with sound and shadow distance. Have a look into stories going
back 10-15 years into living with the flicker and sounds.

~~~
blunte
We have huge turbines in farmlands in the south of the Netherlands. I assume
the farmers get some subsidy, but it seems like a good overlap of land use.

~~~
Siemer
Up to 36.000 euro per mill per year actually. Not a bad time to be owning
farmland in the Netherlands.

~~~
blunte
Plus it appears that you get to put a logo of your farm up on the pole. :)

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llukas
Sea based wind farms seem to have 3W/m^2 limit.

Also low _average_ density is not that bad - it means less bigger turbines can
be used to extract same energy:

"In the onshore region, with characteristics similar to that of the USA Great
Plains, the farm power density is bounded to around 1 W m−2. This is in line
with previous studies (Adams and Keith 2013, Miller et al 2015). Despite the
relatively low farm power density, the wind farm efficiency remains relatively
high under the condition that the turbine spacing remains wide (10.5 D0).
Therefore, in these areas it would be more efficient to build one very large
wind farm with a wide turbine spacing, instead of several separated smaller
wind farms with a more narrow turbine spacing."

[http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa5d86](http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa5d86)

------
propman
I don’t know nearly enough about this but I never really gave it any thought.
Does anyone who has expertise in this field know if the increase in
continental and local temperatures would cause a meaningful increase in global
warming as well?

Everything has to be done in moderation in my opinion. We don’t fully
understand the costs of a lot of things when done in scale. I’ve been
zealously following wind benchmarks and had a bit of a contrarian view that
wind was better than solar but I’m now not so sure.

~~~
sidhuko
Have a look into microgeneration and verticle wind turbines. That's where wind
is strongest.

------
bsder
> meeting current U.S. electricity needs alone would require wind farms to
> cover fully 12 percent of the U.S. land area.

> low-density wind turbines operating over the windiest one-third of the
> continental U.S. to generate enough power to meet current U.S. electricity
> demand — a plausible scenario for wind-power use in the late 21st century.

Covering that big a chunk of the continental US with wind turbines is
considered plausible?!?!?!

The Eisenhower Interstate System is roughly 48,000 miles long. If we assume
that all interstates are about 1/10 of a mile wide (176 yards--a little less
that 2 football fields or roughly 25 lanes wide), then the Interstate System
is about 4,800 square miles in area.

The US is 3,796,742 square miles in area.

So, the Eisenhower Interstate System is approximately .15% of the total US
land area.

And the paper is proposing to cover almost _100 TIMES!_ the land area of the
interstate system with wind farms.

My bullshit sensors are going off in a big way.

~~~
propman
Actually the places where wind is the strongest, (New Mexico, parts of West
Texas, and everything directly above that in middle America) there is
significant land space and not much else. Population density is all less than
10 people per sq mile and large chunks 0 people per sq mile. The people who
own the ranches there absolutely love wind because it’s an additional revenue
stream and the local towns are being reinvigorated due to additional revenue
from the energy companies and more jobs. We need around 25% from Wind and 3%
of America where there’s really not much else not even farms works out well.

For solar, the best place in North America is the Mojave Desert which also has
wide open space and no population.

~~~
labster
No human population does not imply no wildlife. Wind and solar farms represent
significant intrusions into wildland, that should be studied. Off the top of
my head, I can think of a few positives and negatives of desert energy
development. But it shouldnt be the same way we treat fossil fuels, that out
of sight is out of mind.

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neilwilson
It doesn't say in the article but do they factor in that it is a
redistribution? Wind is waste solar energy as airflow. So once you extract the
energy and use it you re-inject the heat elsewhere.

At the moment that is offset by reducing a carbon power plant, but if wind is
used to cover power expansion then dont you just end up moving the wind to the
heat islands over cities (say)?

~~~
usrusr
It says so in the article, but carefully hidden in plain view so that the
reader is not likely to be distracted from the sensationalistic first glance
message: whenever it talks about warming caused by wind installations it is
explicitly qualified as _local_ warming. People with an existing anti wind
power bias will conveniently miss that detail.

By the way, the numbers stated seem to be much lower than the differences in
local temperature you would get by building a city, planting or harvesting a
forest and so on.

~~~
baxtr
I was wondering the same: we do terra forming since 10k years, deforest, farm,
build cities etc. The effect of those should be an order of magnitude higher
than wind installations... Am I wrong here?

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dmichulke
Can anyone elaborate on the possibly clean alternative not mentioned in the:
Tidal Power

I know the work has still to be done by something so it will affect something
else somehow, but what is it?

The speed of the moon?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power)

~~~
sidhuko
Not efficient enough to compete at scale with wind or solar.

------
wcoenen
Link to the original research:

[https://keith.seas.harvard.edu/publications/climatic-
impacts...](https://keith.seas.harvard.edu/publications/climatic-impacts-wind-
power)

------
flukus
I don't think they've connected cause and effect here. Presumably they could
look for the same effect in off shore wind farms and that would eliminate
nearly all local factors playing a role.

------
dmichulke
There's not enough detail in the article to really judge what's going on but I
suppose the local rise of temperature is due to

\- wind flows getting redirected, so no chilling effect from wind. However,
this would also mean no warming effect from warm winds, so why is this not net
neutral?

\- heat generated through friction (wind on the blades, generator heat),
however that would als imply that somewhere else there is less heat generated
through friction, so why is this not net neutral either?

~~~
manicdee
And the land clearing, concerting, roads and large structures converting
sunlight into local heat. Removing vegetation is probably the greatest single
increase in local temperatures.

------
elipsey
I’m not sure that the research cited supports the editorial position of the
article, which I understand to be that wind power is less useful than expected
by a consensus of scientists because it causes local warming that will not be
quickly offset by carbon savings, and has inadequate energy density (per unit
area) to practically provide the entire power supply.

However, as far as I can see the article does not cite any claim by scientists
or anyone else that the success conditions for wind power are to replace all
other power, or to completely, immediately, or locally, negate climate change.
It is not claimed that local warming around wind farms will ever increase
considerably beyond 0.5C, while global climate change has been predicted to
greatly exceed that amount if not remediated.

Miller and Keith find that policy makers have over estimated the energy
density of wind power.[1] The study finding that wind farms cause local
warming wasn’t linked, but I found it myself, unfortunately pay-walled by the
journal.[2] At least we can read the summary, which reflects some statements
found in the Bloomberg article:

“Wind's warming can exceed avoided warming from reduced emissions for a
century. […] We find that generating today's US electricity demand (0.5 TWe)
with wind power would warm Continental US surface temperatures by 0.24°C. […]
The warming effect is: small compared with projections of 21st century
warming, approximately equivalent to the reduced warming achieved by
decarbonizing global electricity generation, and large compared with the
reduced warming achieved by decarbonizing US electricity with wind.”

Physics Today published an article discussing this study (hopefully after
being allowed to read the whole thing, unlike us). It sounds like the local
warming effect is more complicated then just a change in mean temperature. The
paper finds that the effect is much stronger at night, depends on location,
and might be managed by placement, and might be beneficial in certain cases
such as reducing the chance of night time frost damaging crops. A 2010
National Academy of Sciences by Roy and Traiteur seems to have similar
findings.[4]

I think it’s important to evaluate the claims in popular press articles about
science findings against the actual cited sources. Research findings tend to
be complicated and subtle – the easy stuff is done already! It’s easy for
journalists mis-characterize, exaggerate, or even contradict the source when
things are already hard enough to understand. In the worst cases, people read
something like Prevention magazine claiming “Scientists’ find coffee cures
cancer!” one week, and “Scientists’ find coffee causes cancer!” the next week,
and then blame scientists for stuff other people said.

[1]
[http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae102/m...](http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae102/meta)

[2]
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511830446X?via%3Dihub)

[3]
[https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.1.2018100...](https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.1.20181004a/full/)

[4]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964241/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964241/)

------
sidhuko
It's not surprising research is catching up with environmental groups from
10-15 years ago. I started a wind turbine business during FiT rush in UK ten
years ago. At that time, John Deere in the US was removing a large wind
turbine farm because it impacted on ecology hundreds of miles downwind. We
already had studies to show it drastically affected bat and bird colonies who
would have fatal lung collapses (explosions) from the air pressure differences
created by the huge blades. There was a growing understanding from those in
microgeneration (under 50KW) that mass scale adoption would only be possible
with small units which are less efficient but also easier to access and fix.
This is the successful model in germany. If 8% of UK land is urbanised then we
have huge expanse of existing high rises to tap before we should planting
these sites on areas of significance (coastal, large open areas)

~~~
usrusr
> There was a growing understanding from those in microgeneration (under 50KW)
> that mass scale adoption would only be possible with small units which are
> less efficient but also easier to access and fix. This is the successful
> model in germany.

The successful model in Germany is building 4 MW turbines wherever we can fit
them (or wherever "landscape protectors" will allow us to put them).

~~~
sidhuko
Germany had 1 million microgenerators in 2008. Just because you don't see
them...

~~~
usrusr
Citation needed, [https://www.wwindea.org/wp-
content/uploads/filebase/small_wi...](https://www.wwindea.org/wp-
content/uploads/filebase/small_wind_/SWWR2017-SUMMARY.pdf) (an apparently pro-
small publication) states the total worldwide number at less than a million in
2015, with just 17000 of those in Germany. The installed total capacity of
small wind in Germany is stated at 26 MW, which is equivalent to a modest wind
farm of six 4.4 MW turbines.

Oh, and I do see plenty of small wind generators installed, they just never
move because they are merely bought as futuristic architectural ornaments, not
to make a difference. They probably run until the first time they require
maintenance, then the novelty has worn off.

