Very hard to reason about. I got that wind turbines do not actually produce more energy than was needed to build them. This is not shown in these charts, i.e. the energy needed to build the wind turbines was largely used outside of Germany, it was part of the price buy them.
> I got that wind turbines do not actually produce more energy than was needed to build them.
Wind turbines generate way more power than what is needed to produce them. Loads of wind turbines will be installed in the North Sea by various countries to generate a huge amount of electricity. I really don't get how you'd think that creating a wind turbine requires way more energy than the electricity it'll produce.
> A 2014 study which looked at the same issue found that 2-megawatt wind turbines installed in Northwest USA paid for themselves in 5-6 months.
> A 2010 analysis of fifty separate studies found that the average wind turbine, over the course of its operational life, generated 20 times more energy than it took to produce. This level was “favourable” in comparison to fossil fuels, nuclear and solar power.
> A 2014 study which looked at the same issue found that 2-megawatt wind turbines
And such wind turbines are nowadays tiny. If you look at https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_windmolenparken_in_d... (Dutch) the column "Turbine vermogen" shows the (average?) megawatt (MW) of the windturbines. The ones planned for 2023 are 11 MW. The ones delivered in 2021 are 9.5 MW. There's a planned windpark with 14 MW turbines for delivery in 2026.
edit: thanks commenters, i stand corrected