A conversation about second order effects against first order deliverables. This is proof of the obvious because very few people seriously believed their emission cost inputs exceeded their energy production, it's been necessary to prove it because of politics, not serious scientific questions to their aggregate burden.
During early years on lower efficiency sure, it's possible wind and solar had higher input costs and lifetime burdens than they produced. We're well beyond that phase now.
If you don't think this, ask yourself if the gas wastage, consumption and fugitive emission at production and supply chain facilities in aggregate is ever costed against the energy returns through the use of the product. I never see serious analysis of things like fugitive gas emissions on the cost side of gas production overall. CCS had no solution for this. It's huge.
And to your point, albeit with a more frivolous example, wind power has been subject to tests for aesthetic satisfaction that never have to be passed with such regularity by, say, telephone wires, roads or sidewalks, other forms of electricity infrastructure, big box stores, oil and gas infrastructure, gas stations, etc.
In some cases if you even ask the question you might be dismissed as a crank because, well, roads and sidewalks can crumble and fall into disrepair, but obviously we're not going to just get rid of sidewalks and roads. There's kind of an unspoken and shared understanding that the necessity of those forms of infrastructure trumps aesthetic concerns.
Status quo extremism might be summed up by the demand that new things have to pass novel and specific tests that would never be applied to the status quo.
I don't think it's fair to dismiss the aesthetic argument entirely though.
As your yourself said, some aesthetic concerns are dismissed because of utility, but not all of them can be. It's not a fiction that a large scale solar or wind farm will occupy more land than an equivalent gas or coal plant. So perhaps some of the concerns aren't quite so "status quo extremism" (lovely phrasing though, I'm going to be stealing that) as just realizing that we missed some things prior that actually mattered.
They might occupy more space but I still think most people would opt to live X miles from the center of a wind/solar farm than a coal plant. Mildly bad aesthetics vs breathing in heavy metals...
Does my not living in a city require that I change my sense of aesthetics? Is my sense of what is and isn't attractive required to be defined by where I live?
I think the whole point is that in cases of aesthetics, we built a bunch of eyesores for utilities and industries in the past anyway. Also I'm sure the next guy is going to say "does my land-ownership not mean anything? Why could my neighbor build an oil field in the past but I can't put up a big wind farm?"
It's not black and white like that and trade-offs get made all the time.
> It's not black and white like that and trade-offs get made all the time.
Exactly.
My point wasn't that we should sacrifice everything for the sake of aesthetics, as many replies to my comment seem to have taken. It's that for some people, aesthetics will matter, and you cannot just dismiss that without running into pushback -- pushback which will be even stronger if you're making people feel ignored. That also directly translates to things being more expensive.
I live a couple of miles away from a windfarm. It's not directly visible, because my home is down in a valley, but it's by the main road into the town so you couldn't miss it. Now that I've set the scene, I can make my declaration: yes, they are awesome, quietly spinning giants, and no, the feeling doesn't wear off :)
Nonetheless, I'll have to admit they are a bit noisy. If you're right underneath them, it's not so pleasant - but it's better than living by a main road, and especially so when there are internal combustion engine vehicles about. Thus, it's a tradeoff I'd personally be willing to take if it meant more sustainably-powered electric vehicles.
>a large scale solar or wind farm will occupy more land than an equivalent gas or coal plant
The land use talking point is so old that I remember hearing it in high school nearly 20 years ago. And the answer now is the same as the answer then, which is that this is not an apples to apples comparison. Windmills actually don't physically occupy something like 99% of the space over which they are distributed, and they are located so as not to interfere with other forms of land use, on land that wouldn't otherwise be used for something.
With solar panels it's a little bit more nuanced because apparently there have been some cases where land has been cleared to make space for panels, which is bad. I would like to think however that's unrepresentative, and the same thing is true of solar panels that they're located in ways that don't interfere with other forms of land use.
Even if wind and solar were not renewable these would still be distinctive advantages they have on the land use question. But if you throw all those nuances away and purely look at something like energy generation per square meter, it makes it look like there's some sort of losing proposition you have to worry about with solar and wind, even though there really isn't.
I do think it's fair to dismiss the aesthetic argument, because like so many other things in this thread, it's this dangling concern with an open unquantified implication for how significant it's supposed to be. That open-ended implication allows a skeptic to get away with implying that maybe it's a big problem without doing any of the work. In my opinion we are now far enough along into the renewable energy transition that this kind of rhetorical move should not be allowed, it should be considered poor form. You want to say it's a problem, that's fair and good, but how big of a problem? Are you at least interested in that kind of question or understand why it's important? What's the upshot? Is the idea that we abandon renewable energy altogether, do 5% less or something? Is it that we do exactly as much as before but we all just agree to be really careful? And why should I have to do your work for you of working through with the implication is supposed to be?
I think a lot of the problems with aesthetics are similar in that there are strategic ways to mitigate them, but perhaps more importantly I don't think that there are actually aesthetic problems here in the first place, and we seem to get along just fine without applying those standards to status quo infrastructure. But, here again, even if we agree that it's a problem, and did some sort of like economic analysis of the trade-off there, we would have to weigh that against the benefits of renewables writ large, are we looking at one penny of problem versus $1 of benefit? I suspect that that even would overstate the problem, but again, It's this unquantified open-ended implication that seems to be doing no work whatsoever to assess the relative scale of the problem and weigh it against the benefits brought by renewables.
> I do think it's fair to dismiss the aesthetic argument, because like so many other things in this thread, it's this dangling concern with an open unquantified implication for how significant it's supposed to be.
And this is where the fault in your argument lies.
You present a perfectly reasonable, logical argument, that is more or less all correct. What your argument fails to account for is the human element -- humans aren't perfectly reasonable, logical beings. They're soft, squishy and have opinions that they hold despite being logically nonsensical.
By dismissing the aesthetic argument, you're dismissing a lot of the human element. Let's put it this way -- you're not getting permits to build a wind or solar farm if the people you have to get the permit from don't want you to build that wind or solar farm because they think it's ugly. You're not likely to convince them otherwise unless you actually address the aesthetics.
You can't always 'build them somewhere else' -- wind farm locations aren't arbitrary. Solar is a little less constrained in this way, but still has some location requirements (you wouldn't put a solar plant on a hillside that is shaded half the day.)
There's also losses from transmission of the generated energy. The further you generate from where you use, the more loss you have to account for.
Eh? Wind farms cause noise?? A massive windfarm was built on the hills behind the house I grew up on and I never heard any noise, even when visiting the extremely popular walking route that goes through them.
>It's not a fiction that a large scale solar or wind farm will occupy more land
This argument still baffles me - when we are talking about the US, things requiring a bit more space is laughable. There's SO MUCH UNUSED SPACE that no one cares about, there's offshore space and dual use space no one gives a damn about how is this even an argument.
If it'd be orders of magnitude yea that'd be a problem but a few percent? Please.
> This argument still baffles me - when we are talking about the US, things requiring a bit more space is laughable.
There tend to be fairly good reasons for why so much land is seemingly unused. You also can't just build a wind or solar plant anywhere, there's areas where either the construction is not feasible, far too expensive, or is too remote. Or just not usable for that type of power generation. You also need access to the labour to build and maintain the facility, and that's going to be harder if you're too far from a population center.
The thing I would be worried about is noise in otherwise serene areas. But I'm yet to see a wind farm in an area and think "bah, what a waste!" I'm usually pretty pleased by the sight of them. And if I'm going to be totally fair, I hate the noise from freeways, but I also don't like living that far away from them.
I love driving by the actual farms that are also wind farms. There are a bunch of them driving between San Jose and LA - just endless huge fields of cabbage or whatever overseen by giant wind turbines.
Also seeing rows of them along ridgelines feels very cool.
Mount Rainier isn't covered in power lines, but it'd be efficient to cover it in wind generators. We also wouldn't put pylons just offshore, but it's also a great place for wind turbines.
Nothing gets past NIMBY except car infrastructure. That's America for you.
There are plenty of alternatives to wind turbines. There are very few or no alternatives to the others you mentioned, especially in rural areas.
Even so, when a community has enough funding, they will often implement such things with additional aesthetic considerations- running wires underground, adding decorative touches or using more expensive materials for sidewalks, adding greenery to roadways such as planting flowers or trees, etc.
As for gas stations and stores, every business has local codes it has to obey, which in some areas may include the visual appearance of the building, the square footage and so on.
If a community chooses not to do these things, it is usually to save money or avoid discouraging new businesses from coming in (i.e. by requiring expensive brickwork facades).
In any case, yes, aesthetics are always a consideration.
If, when people raise aesthetic concerns about windmills, all they are really saying is that it's subject to the same level of concern as our electric and telecom and highway and gas infrastructure, which have been built out like a nervous system into every city and town across the country, and therefore it will be as equally as easy to build out as all of those, then there's no such thing as an aesthetic problem with windmills.
If there's an elevated standard that differentiates aesthetics of windmills from those other cases, then those other things are not subject to the same type of consideration after all.
I'm not sure I agree there truly are such things as "alternatives" to windmills depending on what you mean. Presumably you locate windmills in places where it's most advantageous to do so, where they are the best answer to a present need, not in places where they are worse than some other alternative, where they, as the lesser alternative, have to make up the difference with escalated emphasis on aesthetic concerns.
It's one of the more idiosyncratic rationalizations for escalated aesthetic standards I have yet heard.
I don’t think you can dismiss the aesthetic concerns. Many people consider the natural beauty around them to be a core part of their living experience. Like with offshore wind farms - if you take coastlines and dot them with wind farms, it does hurt that beauty and experience in a meaningful way. And if you’ve been near them, they produce immense and constant noise that is hard to ignore. There will definitely be effects from that on marine life, as boat noise also affects them. Many of the things you listed like telephone wires or roads don’t make noise, so it’s not the same trade off, and they are in places we expect nature to be displaced.
You're proving GP's point. Roads on their own don't make noise, but if I go outside I can hear the road noise from cars going down a IH-35 which is a mile away. (It isn't even the only road I can hear noise from)
It’s totally different from the noise a wind turbine makes. Watch a video of what it’s like on YouTube. Road noise can also be mitigated in many ways and in many areas it is - based on the surface, walls, etc. But also consider that we expect that urban areas have a degree of noise, but we also generally expect that serene natural spaces are free of those things to a greater extent.
It's hypothetically true that road noise can be mitigated, it is also nevertheless true that we have societally chosen to endure road noise, and the harms it causes which have measurable outcomes on everything from quality of life to mental health to property values.
As I noted in a different comment, if all we're saying is that we are open to windmills having the same adverse impacts on environments as roads already do, then to me that's the same as saying there's no such thing as a windmill noise problem.
Transmission lines absolutely do make noise. Plenty of smaller scale power line elements can also hum.
For anyone complaining about offshore wind (which is way the hell off in the distance) it may be worth considering that the alternative is those houses and beaches on the shore cease to exist in the future if we don't build the turbines.
> Transmission lines absolutely do make noise. Plenty of smaller scale power line elements can also hum.
Maybe higher power ones can, but I’ve never had residential lines hum. And as for long distance transmission lines - even their noise is nothing compared to what a spinning blade on a wind turbine generates. You can find videos of the noise on YouTube.
> For anyone complaining about offshore wind (which is way the hell off in the distance) it may be worth considering that the alternative is those houses and beaches on the shore cease to exist in the future if we don't build the turbines.
This feels like a strawman argument or something. I don’t think such an extreme positioning makes sense. There are many other variables like power sources (nuclear power for example), reduced consumption, changing population levels (trending downwards in many countries). It’s not like building wind power is the only way for humanity to thrive.
> There are many other variables like power sources (nuclear power for example)
The problem is that there aren't. You might be a wind NIMBY and nuclear YIMBY, but guess what, there's millions of nuclear NIMBYs ready to oppose whatever vision you personally hold.
The end result is permanent gridlock all in the name of preserving the subjective aesthetic preferences of a tiny handful of people. You can't run a society like this, you just can't.
At some point the urgent global concerns need to override sufficiently frivolous local concerns.
Having lived near both simultaneously I can tell you power lines definitely do makes noise while I'm genuinely having to google to confirm which wind turbines make noise because I never noticed.
My concerns tend to be the cost in terms of land and intermittency that are harder to evaluate. Nevertheless, I believe we should not let the perfect (nuclear) be the enemy of the good (renewables), so your comments are welcome. We should neither fuss over the aesthetics of a solution nor obsess over the exact time at which it is strictly preferable to status quo on a very specific metric.
> it's been necessary to prove it because of politics
This is fascinating to me, how political ideology models the same type of arms race as parasite or bacteria. We're at the point of the game that we deny the opponent's mere existence, as the arms race devolves beyond addressing or refuting their views.
Why work in the logical axis, where "green" solutions can have a carbon impact themselves. Instead, wash them away with loaded language ("second order") and then proffer the conclusion that it must be political if anyone questions you. There absolutely couldn't possibly be another reason, carbon emissions only matter when one side says so, and that's final.
Well, it’s really clear that wind energy pollutes less than natural gas, per kwh generated, once the plant is built. So then we looked at the costs for building the plant, where wind won again. So now we’re looking at the costs of building the materials that go into building the plant (a “second-order” effect), where, shockingly, wind wins again… against simply running the gas plant, excluding its cost of construction!
I would think most people would be happy with the one that doesn’t produce clouds of cancer-causing smoke every time you turn on a light switch, but I suppose some people are harder to convince.
yes, it does. So the far right can use the same semantic arguments (redefining words) as the far left. "wind energy pollutes", that's enough (for them).
I'm not taking that position, just showing how dirty politics becomes when you stop using logic and just go for the jugular with opponents instead of engage with them on a fair level. Again, the ones who engage fairly will die off - figuratively or literally. It's an arms race, or (whatever biologists call it when two bacteria evolve defenses and kill each other).
First and second order problems aren't woke they're rational observations to outcome. The first order problems are decarbonise the second order problems are the anti wind and anti solar and anti nuke argument. It's not designed to denigrate or put somebody down, its distinguishing between categories of reasoning and outcome drive.
I'm sorry if you think I said it to be dismissive or to put somebody down. I just want to try and assert that aesthetics and personal preference have to rank against a larger outcome.
I accept for some people their personal outcome outranks wider goals. I don't know how you discuss problems with that view: what's the basis of e.g. decarbonising, if you don't believe it's a problem or don't care, as long as your personal domain is unaffected?
Right, and this is what makes it such a frivolous talking point. I mean, if it really were the case that the expenditures of oil were indeed at scales that overwhelmed any advantages of wind, that would be a legit argument.
But to make that case you'd actually have to do the next step of assessing the relative scales of how much oil gets used in the creation of windmill components compared to an alternative case where the energy is generated with traditional fossil fuel infrastructure.
I feel like if we're going to bring up the fossil fuel inputs into the creation of critical components for windmills, the mandatory next sentence has to be an acknowledgment of the relative scales of consumption in both cases. Otherwise it's a throwaway line with no context and no clear upshot.
The easy argument for this is that switching everything to electric and then powering it with oil, would require significantly less oil (maybe 50-60%) that the status quo.
We should switch, even if we don't convert to renewables. (Which we absolutely should)
Well, also one can debunk these claims by just looking at the money.
If oil inputs were so massive, the cost of a turbine (or by implication the electricity it generates) should be MUCH higher. Just guessing, but probably orders of magnitude higher.
Well... technically... some people are starting to https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/articles/carbon-rivers-make... but this also produces energy and compared to the amount of electricity they produce during their lifetime this carebon can only be incredibly negligible
> Carbon Rivers’ recycling uses pyrolysis—a process during which organic components of a composite (e.g., resins or polymers) are broken down with intense heat in the absence of oxygen and separated from the inorganic fiberglass reinforcement.
It is rather ridiculous to fret about the very minor emissions of manufacturing wind turbines and solar panels compared to sticking with fossil fueled energy sources!
We don't see similarly breathless studies of the carbon emissions of all the other manufactured things we need to run our civilization.
Where's the emissions involved in making washing machines? Highways? Primary schools? Oh dear, let's not make those things!
But no, it is only the things that compete with the fossil industry that must be tallied up so NIMBYs can have some excuse to ditch these crucial solutions to our climate problem.
The goal of building washing machines, highways, etc. is not a cleaner environment. The point of windfarms is, but it defeats the purpose if producing them emits more carbon than they save.
It would defeat the purpose if windfarms made more pollution than they removed, but they don’t. By orders of magnitude. With current processes. They don’t.
Green energy sources like wind and solar don't remove emissions. They add less.
> Energy transition aspirations are similar. The goal is powering modernity, not addressing the sixth mass extinction. Sure, it could mitigate the CO2 threat (to modernity), but why does the fox care when its decline ultimately traces primarily to things like deforestation, habitat fragmentation, agricultural runoff, pollution, pesticides, mining, manufacturing, or in short: modernity. Pursuit of a giant energy infrastructure replacement requires tremendous material extraction—directly driving many of these ills—only to then provide the energetic means to keep doing all these same things that abundant evidence warns is a prescription for termination of the community of life.
Yeah, these objections are always obviously made in pure bad faith. But it's still worth taking the time to refute them, because not doing so just gives them ammunition.
At some point of transition the CO2 emissions drop to zero because all the energy at every stage comes from renewables. Solar can pay it's emissions cost back in 6 months but every solar panel company powers their factories with their own solar panels so in practice the practical emissions are reduced a lot and as mining adopts the new electric vehicles most things will tend towards almost nothing. The more renewables are adopted the shorter this emissions payback becomes. Manufacturing in the EU for example is about 55% renewables already.
This is only true on the energy and transportation sides of emissions. Some processes like the creation of cement and refining of steel create CO2 through chemical processes, regardless of the energy source.
You don't necessarily need fossil fuels for steel production. It is also nothing impossible in capturing CO2 from cement making - it's mainly centralized production and much simpler problem than transportation.
You do need a carbon source for steel production. It’s integral to steel. You don’t need coal per se, but you do need to burn carbon. Every technique so far will release some CO2 as a waste result.
The steel industry is one of the largest emitters of CO2, contributing 6%–7% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
That said, there's a difference between sourcing that carbon from fossil fuels, carbon "new" to the current land|sea|atmosphere cycle having been drawn up from where it was sequestered millions of years past, and carbon that is already part of the surface dynamic.
Major steel players, those in the billion tonne per annum mining and processing chain, are already going hard at replacing current steel making with several alternatives and have already built pilot plants to trial low | zero "new carbon" production techniques.
The carbon needed for steel as an alloying element is a small fraction of the carbon needed for reduction of iron ore. The latter is replaceable with renewable energy (hydrogen or direct electrolytic reduction).
Also, note that 70% of steel production in the US isn't from ore at all, but is from scrap metal. Most of the steel used in renewable energy infrastructure will not be consumed, but will be recycled.
On the other hand, steelmaking also uses limestone as flux, to remove impurities from molten steel. When heated on the steel this drives off CO2. Calcium oxide could be used instead, but then that has to be sourced without CO2 emission, just as in cement manufacture.
I think there are at least two ways to make lime without CO2 emission. The first is normal limestone calcination, but with CO2 capture. The other is to use calcium silicate. This means dissolution of the silicate with hydrochloric acid, separation of silica, then high temperature reaction of calcium chloride with steam to produce lime and hydrogen chloride. I understand there's a company trying to commercialize this latter process.
You can eliminate the vast majority of emissions by using hydrogen. Then the waste will be water instead of CO2. This is no longer hypothetical. Pilot plants have been successful enough that at least SSAB is investing billions into hydrogen-based steel production.
Some mines are lucky in that trucks deliver payload downhill, making it attractive to charge batteries regeneratively for the empty drive back up. Where that is not the case, electric driving is not attractive at all. Conveyors and cable cars are much easier to electrify, if applicable.
It’s not incredibly long way at all considering that there’s already electric mining truck in operations. Several varieties in fact (overhead wire and battery-electric).
But they’re a very long way from approaching 100% of mining if that’s what you mean.
Meanwhile in Germany they cut 200km² of old forrest to build wind farms, locals are angry.
Ministry of environment said:
“Wind energy makes a decisive contribution to the energy transition and to the preservation of nature. This is the only way to preserve forests and important ecosystems.” You cannot make this up.
Please read carefully if you already share a BILD article. While they claim, that the forest is 200km² big and that it will be completely cut down, there is no actual basis to that. The official documents for that wind park talk about cutting down 29Ha, which would be 0.29km². And not all of that is permanent, some is temporary for access and construction. The permanently cut down area would be about 13.1Ha. None of that is in the actual old growth of the forest. So we are talking about 0.15% or so of the whole area of the forest! You can find more info about this here: https://rp-kassel.hessen.de/sites/rp-kassel.hessen.de/files/...
Now, if you tell me that no tree should be cut down for wind energy, then may I point out that from 2018 to 2021 we lost about 250000Ha of forest to climate change and drought (https://www.scinexx.de/news/biowissen/karte-zeigt-waldverlus...). That is 10 times the size of the forest you were so concerned about. Some sources even talk about 500000Ha if you include 2021 (https://www.geo.de/natur/oekologie/alarmierend--5-prozent-de...). We do need to transition to be carbon neutral to have any chance of stopping that. Cutting down less than a percent of trees for energy production while we have already lost several times that to climate change is not great, but it is much better than continuing to burn fossil fuels to kill the rest of the forests as well. There are no viable alternatives to become carbon neutral in the time frame we have left to my knowledge, so I would agree with the quote.
So please don't ever, ever quote BILD for facts. They have an intentional agenda to mislead people and they either conveniently twist the truth or just make up stuff. Unless you are able to distinguish that, it is best to not read it at all.
So you agree that your initial statement about 200km² of forest being cut down is incorrect? Which is mostly what I took issue with. If we agree there now, I am happy.
However regarding the study you linked, while it does show a downward trend in burned area, I am not sure how that relates to our "debate"? It clearly shows that the reduction of burned area each year is down mostly because of humans burning down fewer wooded areas intentionally (3.3.1). Meanwhile the area burned down because of the effects of climate change is actually up (3.3.2). Which does match up with the studies I linked to. However, the study you linked actually only covers up to 2007, which is soon close to 20 years ago. Meanwhile what I linked to covers until 2021. There has been a significant increase in global temperatures in that time (~0.5°C, which considering the limit from Paris is 1.5°C), as such it is very likely the impact of global warming has increased for the time periods after the ones covered in the study. And your study also shows no significant decrease in burned area each year in Europe, so it doesn't really say much about Germany. It also only covers burning. Most of the recent area reduction actually hasn't necessarily been through burning. Plenty of trees died because of drought and then either not having the necessary water to grow or failing to defend against harmful insects and similar.
Climate change won't necessarily burn your house down or make you drown in rising sea levels. Most people will probably be impacted by food shortages, diseases spreading, wars and other factors. As such I am a bit confused about why you linked that study. It seems to focus on a rather narrow factor of forest reduction. But it doesn't cover much of the recent times with the highest temperature increases (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...), doesn't disagree with any of my statements and only says the amount of reduction reduced. It doesn't say that forests actually started to increase (because they didn't).
Considering how upset you seemed about humans cutting trees down, I just don't follow what you are trying to argue about anymore? Did you just want to point out, that from 1940 until 2007 the area lost each year to fire reduced by around 30%, so clearly climate change is not that big of a problem, even though the study says the impact of climate change is increasing and in Germany we lost about 5% of the total forested area in 4 years in a later period not covered by your study and burning isn't the only reason for losing forests? It probably would help me, if you tied your argument into the previous discussion. From my perspective it seems to mostly just agree with what I said, in which case I don't understand, why I would have to be more open to debate, since there doesn't seem to be anything to debate?
I probably must have misunderstood you somewhere, so please enlighten me, if that is the case. Apart from that, have a nice day and sorry that I seem to not understand what you are trying to tell me!
- There has been a significant increase in global temperatures in that time (~0.5°C, which considering the limit from Paris is 1.5°C).
Because human activity rise in urban areas, temperatures from rulal areas have not increased that much. Satellite and balloon measures proofs that. (1)
Also rising temperatures is not new phenomena. Greenland ice core project (2) showing that there was about 25 dramatic climate changes in history. Its called Dansgaard–Oeschger event. (3), (4) and shows that for example during Younger Dryas (5) there was dramatic temperature decline and increase in few decades.
Back to topic. Why Germany need so much renewable source of energy and having most expensive energy price in same time? Shouldn't they build more nuclear power plants instead of cutting trees for unreliable source of energy?
That would be amazing if it was the case (and wind would get a lot more support if so), but it doesn't say that. It says it pays for itself emissions-wise.
While this is talking about carbon emissions the monetary payoff is not that much different. There's a reason people are building these things like crazy. The solution to climate change is to align the incentives.
It's not too surprising that the payoff times are similar - the cost to manufacture something (that doesn't require large amounts of human labour) tends to approximate the energy input required.
> “Although the carbon offset depends on the exact older technology the wind turbines are replacing, we would expect a similar offset internationally. In New Zealand it is gas turbines, but many countries will be displacing fossil fuel generators.
Aren’t gas turbines a type of fossil fuel generator?
I don't have sources off the top of my head, but I think there is good evidence that wind farms (and other large structures!) can disrupt migration routes, which can pose very large challenges for birds.
So where to put wind farms to minimise disruption is a definite consideration.
They kill the prey of large predatory birds. If we stop hunting them down ourselves and they have enough food, wind turbines are no threat to their population.
There are areas where wind turbines have been put up near population of eagles (Smøla in Norway for instance) and the population is increasing. Even though we know some of them are killed by the wind turbine.
Giving them a good habitat and not hunting them or their prey to extinction is orders of magnitude more important than not building wind power (as long as we’re not incredibly stupid about where we put them). And avoiding global warming is an incredibly important part of preserving their habitats. Also.. have you seen what oil spills does to birds?
Which is why the National Audubon society is cautiously positive to wind power.
Domestic cats don't affect the food supply of large raptors because those cats are where people are, and where large raptors, for the most part, aren't. (The peopled places that have largish raptors also tend to have a surplus of pigeons.)
Raptor hunting has been illegal for decades in the US.
My general argument is for us to convert far less energy in the first place, not to delude ourselves that we can tech our way into increasing our usage without significant environmental impact.
Is not the embedded energy basically what they’re looking at?
Anyway, we need more green electricity to convert less energy overall - for example since electrification means you can replace gas for things like heating and cooking, which with heat pumps and induction stoves can reduce the energy use by a half (for stoves) to a quarter vs. gas.
This is basically an artificial concern. Waste from fossil fuel is massively more huge in scale - in my country we dump 12 million tonnes of toxic coal fly ash per year [1]. Wind turbine blades will never be anywhere near that order or magnitude… And that’s just the solid stuff you can see, not counting anything (like fine particulate matter, nitrous oxides, sulfur dioxide, etc.) put straight into the air burning coal, gas and oil…
We need to be considering the impact of any big changes we make in regards to our energy. But the thing is, we already know the answers to most of these "but what about" questions and they've been answered time and time again, yet they keep being brought up and used in an effort to slow progress.
Which is worse, the __________ caused by technology Z or the airborne carbon dioxide they prevent?
THE CARBON DIOXIDE IS WORSE, most of the time.
Can we at least start at a place of the carbon dioxide is worse and go from there? I'm not against listening to reason, I'm just against people looking for every reason not to change how we gain and consume our energy.
Exactly, it's not that we shouldn't be striving to mitigate the issue of handling components over their lifetime, but if we're to have any hope at all of this being a conversation that grows in sophistication over time, these shouldn't be dangled with an open-ended implication that they may or may not pose a fundamental challenge to the whole project of renewable energt. Such suggestions should be dismissed as punch drunk nonsense.
I straight up do not care a about plastic use at all anymore.
Specifically: provided the plastic is going to well-managed landfill, and not being washed into the oceans or waterways, then really, what is the problem? Once in landfill it's CO2 which won't end up in the atmosphere, or water, or really doing much of anything while it just sits there.
And every bit of it is oil production which won't be burned.
Yes, it's an environmental red herring. I do outdoor events and I do not allow plastic straws there because they end up in nature. Plastic in nature is obviously bad. Landfills are cheap, plentiful, and safe (even tested regularly for leachate) in the industrialized world.
And more importantly, the people who actually DO pollute by the ton want you to be more worried about your straws than the laws that allow them to do it. Don't fall for it.
> provided the plastic is going to well-managed landfill
Hence this qualifier. In my region, my trash goes to landfill. I've been to landfill! It's a modern design with stabilized storage cells, you can see them excavating it as they expand.
Is it preferable to burn coal and natural gas then? I'm not saying you're wrong (you could be right) but let's not forget why we are pushing for renewable energy.
We do need to disassemble them and move them somewhere, so those costs should be included. Perhaps they should be made to where they can be broken down into sections and reused as durable seawall filler or as construction filler in levees or dams.
This not a battle between nuclear and wind. Why not use both? Nuclear has dangers (which people are learning to mitigate) but wind, solar, and geothermal cannot be used in every situation. When no better choice exists we should embrace nuclear.
I wasn't arguing against nuclear. I was responding to the comment regarding "What's the harm in piling it up on empty land until someone finds use for it" as applying to nuclear waste.
Regarding your point, though, I'm certainly no expert but I believe at this point people aren't investing in new nuclear capacity because they don't believe that long term it will be cost competitive with renewables + storage.
"The study reviewed current literature on wind farms, as well as using real construction data to take into account everything from the manufacturing of individual turbine parts, to transporting them into place, to decommissioning the entire wind farm at Harapak"
I wonder if they take into account the footprint of storage. It should be noted that if wind is used as a serious replacement for non-renewable energy or nuclear then it must have associated installed storage capacity which I would say should be considered an inextricable component of its carbon footprint.
No, that’s totally irrelevant - on a large interconnected grid you can get past 75% renewables with basically no storage (South Australia does it as part of Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM)). No single generation type can cover 100% itself - even when things were largely coal, it was always required to have hydro or gas dispatchable generation for peaking, and this wasn’t counted in the cost or any other statistic of those plants… it’s just a reality of running a grid.
In the same way, fugitive emissions are usually ignored for gas (even though the case is far stronger than yours for including them as part of the lifecycle analysis), and oil exploration, refinery, transport etc. emissions aren’t counted in car’s fuel economy.
The study in question is trying to measure a particular thing, and it does it appropriately.
In a world where we move towards 100% decarbonisation, energy storage isn’t going to be a significant factor. If you replace fossil fuel with electricity for industrial heat, which represents a huge amount of energy we use, you can use thermal batteries that will last practically forever. So the carbon emissions will be negligible in the long run.
Even if you use li-ion or other electric batteries the materials can generally be recycled with near zero carbon emissions. So carbon emission price we pay now should be spread over the centuries that those materials will be used.
Renewables will also be paired with electric vehicles that represent a huge flexible load. I have already set my car to automatically charge only when electricity is cheap. I would even feed energy back on the grid if I had the option.
So you see, if you count energy storage for renewables, you also have to count the emissions from fossil industrial heat and ICE cars, and fertiliser production (green ammonia production will also be flexible load that can serve as energy storage, etc
By some accounts, if we decarbonise everything, we really don’t need all that much dedicated energy storage at all. The minimum production on a well connected grid will be about enough for base load needs.
That's exactly the question the study was answering
> The study reviewed current literature on wind farms, as well as using real construction data to take into account everything from the manufacturing of individual turbine parts, to transporting them into place, to decommissioning the entire wind farm at Harapaki – which comprises 41 turbines.
> if it was a negative return on investment, energy wise
Unfortunately, cost does not track emissions that closely. People do all sorts of things that cause emissions all the time, and usually their choice is dictated by which option is lowest cost.
For example, if one wanted to maximize profits, energy wise, there are better options than wind turbines and batteries. The choice to go with wind seems politically motivated due to optics of the alternatives.
I'm not familiar with this metric but does it at least account for the cost that non-wind sources must incur to keep their facilities running? For example, if you have a wind farm you will prioritize using that energy when available, but the natural gas facility still needs to employ people for low wind situations right?
So the natural gas facility is not generating very much most of the year, but still needs quite a bit of people with the expertise to keep it operational despite that in addition to land lease costs, equipment maintenance etc. Does LCOE turn the cost of the natural gas facility cost into $0 during those situations to be fair?
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Edit:
Just glanced at the Wikipedia article and the variables involved in the LCOE equation. Seems to unfairly benefit wind and solar.
"One of the most important potential limitations of LCOE is that it may not control for time effects associated with matching electricity production to demand."
"In particular, if the costs of matching grid energy storage are not included in projects for variable renewable energy sources such as solar and wind, they may produce electricity when it is not needed in the grid without storage. The value of this electricity may be lower than if it was produced at another time, or even negative."
I thought wind was often quoted as the cheapest per MWh compared to everything else?
(I realise that profit in $ might differ in that the wind doesn’t blow on demand while eg gas might - but even then businesses will spring up to fill every profitable niche).
It's not either or, it's both and. Of course there are different options that have better results in some axes. Building wind does not mean not building nuclear, solar, hydro, tidal, biomass pyrolysis, etc.
Yes, but due to the nature of wind being fickle, we have to keep these other energy facilities running and people employed. This adds to the costs of these other energy solutions while they are doing very little while wind is blowing. This messes all these metrics up.
Exactly right. Government subsidies makes a lot of things appear viable and/or affordable, when in reality they are not. Subsidies are bolstered by politics.
Wind farms appear as ridiculous as they are. Yet... they keep getting built because there's government money to be made. There's government money to be made because they give the appearance of "doing something, anything" while in fact doing almost nothing. Follow the votes...
Wind farms generate substantial quantities of power at like $0.04/kwh unsubsidized - they're in no way ridiculous. California generates well over 10% of their total electricity demand via wind, Texas is closer to 25% of their total demand (more than coal and nuclear combined). Hundreds of thousands of cheap, carbon-free GWh produced is an odd definition of "doing almost nothing".
ERCOT is generating 28.6% from wind in 2023. It is getting so high, that for the late night hours, demand is so tiny that some 5-10% of the wind energy goes nowhere -- a phenomenon called 'curtailment. The occurs because the baseload nuclear and the combined heat and power thermal generators are already operating at minimal levels, and supply way outpaces demand (usu. early in the wee hours of the morning).
EIA indicates that this curtailment will likely increase. For now, its about as much as a typical nuclear power plant generates.
They are ridiculous for a number of reasons, including the quantity needed and the storage problem. Neither are trivial issues to solve - making any stand-alone production numbers meaningless.
The obvious answer has been staring us in the face for decades. Yet... underinformed electorate continues to be unrationally scared, making it politically infeasible.
We could have been 100% "green" energy decades ago. Let that sink in... follow the votes.
Texas power has gone negative, CA has dropped to zero. That means power flowing on to the grid either has no where to go or is only being charged transmission fees (and those in CA are gonna be excessive).
Transmission and storage are big issues. But they are solvable ones. Storage can be localize and the grid can be upgraded (and needs to be).
Candidly we need to look for ways to decouple energy creation, storage and transmission from each other. How do I buy enoung fractional shares in creation and storage so I only have to pay the cost of transmission? How do I make my utility into an asset!
California also experiences rolling blackouts each summer - and lately turns off the power when it's too hot, wind blows too hard, wind doesn't blow enough, etc.
It's incredibly unreliable for biggest state in the union. But... we can sure pick a couple ultra-rare events and say "see, wind works" when it in fact does not.
We haven't had a rolling blackout since the early 2000 and Enron.
What we do have is decades of PGE not doing any work to maintain or upgrade their grid. Our power company is so incompetent it has a death toll.
Texas gets something like 24 percent of its power from wind. IT has now updated its rules to force all renewables to be ride through sources (this will add cost but it isnt going to slow things down).
Go take a deep dive into the numbers, you might be shocked at what you find.
If you were able to read the statement you would clearly see no such thing.
Erecting more and more wind farms to make you feel fuzzy at night is absurd. We have the solution - metaphoric you just doesn't want it because reasons.
Every one of these types of threads pulls out the pro-nuclear folks. I get that nuclear is really cool, but I don't get why anyone loves paying billions for projects that take 10+ years to complete. And sometimes they don't even complete! In the meantime you could've setup many different alternative energy solutions, not just wind, could've done it in the fraction of the time and probably under-budget.
>I get that nuclear is really cool, but I don't get why
Because nuclear will never happen for the exact reasons you stated, but if people think it's a viable option and argue for it, it can be used to delay renewable transition, so that legacy Oil and Gas based producers can reap their insane revenue for an extra few years. It's literally just a delaying tactic.
If nuclear was even remotely economically viable, it would be part of a robust future energy mix. People abandon nuclear because it's not worth the effort when you can literally place a glass panel in unused land and get 1 KW/m^2 for 20 years with minimal intervention. Nobody would have to "vouche" for nuclear if it was economically meaningful. Look at Texas; Politically and economically, you would expect it to be very against renewables, as Texas has always been a fuel behemoth, with significant amounts of it's political establishment literally being oil barons, and now with using wind turbines being """woke"""
But they are still building out wind energy like no tomorrow, because it's so goddamned cheap and profitable.
You know this is a really ironic response to this thread. Many of us wish nuclear power didn't take 10+ years to build, but it does. How long is it going to take to change people's minds about this topic? Maybe the same amount as it might take to change your opinion on alternative energy sources.
At least alternative energy has less NIMBY people and more willing to take a shot at it.
Social licensing costs are just costs and won't go away just because you really really dislike them.
Besides, even if you could wave a magic wand and delete such costs, like the Chinese government can with their top down control of planning and media, it's still worse, as their revealed preferences demonstrate with their acceleration of renewables build-out and slowdown of nuclear build-out.
They can be built much more quickly than nuclear plants and they take coal and oil out of furnaces right now, which is exactly what we need. That's nothing but good.
Seriously did nobody read the article?! The article was specifically about this question, windfarms generate all the energy they needed to make them in 2 years time. This is completely unrelated to government subsidies.
Couple of days ago I tried converting Britain's wind energy into equivalent barrels of oil per day.
Raw energy it's 130,000 barrels per day. But available energy it's around 350,000 per day. Britain's share of the North Sea oil is something like 1 million barrels/day. Excluding nat gas. That's down from 3 million/day 25 years ago. Notable oil production will continue to decline but wind energy will not.
I also calculated energy in watts per person and it's 130W/person.
Scotland is microscopic in relation to the landmass and population that is the US. Yet... look at the sheer volume of wind turbines Scotland has to operate to get anywhere between 10% - 80% of their power generation, depending on the day and wind conditions.
You cannot build a reliable grid based on wind. It requires other non-temperamental energy sources to be available when the wind isn't blowing. Solar? What if it's an overcast day?
If you look at that chart - you'll notice Nuclear takes over the heavy lifting when necessary. So... why not just have a couple more nuclear plants and forgo the unreliable sources?
Using wind and/or solar does not automagically make your system better or more green. People have pigeon-holed themselves into a reality where only wind and solar are acceptable... and then we hide away the actual sources that provide the necessary backfill.
No one's suggesting 100% wind or solar but we can still improve the system with more. Plus both are incredibly quick to build compared to nuclear and fossil fuels, so if you're a country dependant on those (like the UK) it's one of the best ways to quickly improve your energy security.
" In 2022, almost 28 TWh of zero carbon electricity was generated by renewable wind in Scotland, representing 35% of all wind generation in the UK. This could power the equivalent of approximately:
a. 10 million households - over a third of the total households in the UK.
b. 85% of total Scottish annual electricity demand."
It requires other non-temperamental energy sources to be available when the wind isn't blowing. Solar? What if it's an overcast day?
Using wind and/or solar does not automagically make your system better or more green.
Why not?
People have pigeon-holed themselves into a reality where only wind and solar are acceptable...
Says who?
and then we hide away the actual sources that provide the necessary backfill.
What does this mean? People are happy that there are economically viable and scalable sources of electricity that don't burn oil and gas. Who is 'hiding' anything away?
The shared grid is struggling for capacity. There are insufficient north to south links because of political instability. All of which leads to excess curtailment.
Nothing is sadder than driving past locked off wind turbines that could be turning and generating green LPG or something, rather than being paid to stand idle.
The powers that be are hiding our most renewable resource - ourselves. We just someone to make a tiktok dance out of jumping into the bioreactor and then we won't need any evil wind turbines or PVs anymore.
I'm not sure the linked study has accounted for the energy required to acquire and operate the batteries used alongside these wind farms. But it would be interesting to see what percentage batteries factor into this equation. I would imagine it's massive.
It has to be massive. There is no other way to manage a 70% production swing in as short as a couple minutes and not have the grid go dark. Which then begs the question of how green the batteries are over decades.
We've picked the least reliable energy source and intellectually anchored ourselves to it - then we don't talk about how we actually keep the lights on 24/7. It's kind of nuts.
The main reason for subsidy is that the costs are all upfront and electricity prices are unpredictable. That is not a problem that is unique to wind, particularly in the climate change era. Systems like strike prices can be competitively priced and avoid overpayment.
Arguably the main problem is that countries take a natural monopoly and then try and treat it like a market. When a well run state company could invest with more certainty.
During early years on lower efficiency sure, it's possible wind and solar had higher input costs and lifetime burdens than they produced. We're well beyond that phase now.
If you don't think this, ask yourself if the gas wastage, consumption and fugitive emission at production and supply chain facilities in aggregate is ever costed against the energy returns through the use of the product. I never see serious analysis of things like fugitive gas emissions on the cost side of gas production overall. CCS had no solution for this. It's huge.