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Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now
- account73466 7y agoWill wind turbines accelerate climate change? edit: during its exploitation I was involved in design of Wind Farms and they affect wind directions at least locally. Naturally, they change climate locally. The question is how local is not global enough.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jandrese 7y agoIn terms of pulling out excess energy from the atmosphere then yes. But the effect will likely be too small to measure on a global scale. Note that the acceleration in here will be in the reverse direction. Plus the heat will eventually be re-released back into the atmosphere thanks to thermodynamics. The majority of the savings will come from offsetting carbon emitting sources of power.
- consumer451 7y agoIsn't removing energy from our over-energized climate system a good thing? I realize that this is a very simplistic view, but if I am wrong I would love to learn something.
- kaybe 7y agoYou are not removing it, it is just converted to heat (in several steps).
- consumer451 7y agoOk yeah, I guess the only way to remove it for now would be something like solar or wind powered carbon sequestration?
- kaybe 7y agoThe current problem we have is the energy imbalance between incoming solar radiation and outgoing thermal radiation, since a growing proportion of the latter is blocked. Any quantity influencing this balance could theoretically be used to get back to the old point. The discussed options are either solar radiation management which lowers the amount of incoming radiation or carbon capture which would allow more outgoing thermal radiation to escape. The first option has ideas such as stratospheric sulfur injections (increasing albedo leading to more reflected incoming sunlight), deploying a sunscreen in space or simply painting areas white. (It should be noted that humanity has been causing albedo changes for a long time simply by changing land cover. Forests have lower albedo than fields, for example.) The problem with the ideas is that they are very unstable. Many need constant renewal and management to be kept active. There are also side effects apparent in the model such as changed atmospheric circulation patterns for some of them, and the ocean acidification due to dissolved CO2 etc are not addressed either. The second option, carbon capture, can be achieved by different means. Basically, carbon needs to be stored in one of the sinks available. The natural sinks are the biosphere (quite small, but increasing it will help) and chemical weathering. If we wait long enough, chemical weathering will lower the CO2 concentrations sufficiently. [0] So one of the ideas here is to increase the speed of the weathering by increasing the surface and availability of the the stone to weather. Others are increasing the biomass sink by planting more of it or fertilizing the oceans so the algae can grow faster and take a part to the ocean floors. Then there is technical carbon sequestration, which needs energy input (you're talking about this, right?). Where the energy comes from shouldn't matter as long as the carbon emission is smaller than the sequestration. I guess all renewable energies and nuclear should work fine. (Maybe there will be a better technology at some point in the future as well, but better not rely on it.) However, now this carbon needs to be stored, which is a problem in itself. Ideas are simply pumping it into the ground, for example depleted natural gas fields (unstable!) or changing it to other forms which needs more energy. (Any energy that can be changed to chemical energy is actually removed from the system, but that will probably not be very much. I'd have to check up on this though, I've found my intuition is not that good yet for these numbers.) There is not a lot of money in it yet, which makes research slow. This is still most probably our best shot. All but one scenarios of the IPCC-1.5°C report have carbon sequestration from 2030 - in 10 years - (in the worst case on the order of half of current emissions!), and the one that doesn't uses biomass capture. We cannot reach a path of <= 1.5°C warming without it. [1] [0] https://skepticalscience.com/weathering.html https://skepticalscience.com/weathering.html [1] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM3b-724x1024.png https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM3...
- klenwell 7y agoI'm curious about the environmental or ecological impact. This is a pretty naive question but: will capturing that energy for human use divert it from other parts of the current ("natural") system where it's being used?
- krastanov 7y agoEnergy wise, the orders of magnitude are quite different so I would not worry. After all, we are not worried about the direct heating from the much more prevalent source of electricity (waste heat from oil or nuclear), rather we are worried about the heating from the sun that is exacerbated by the accidental byproduct of burning oil. Habitat destruction from these new technologies: no idea...
- ScottBurson 7y agoNo, pulling out excess energy from the atmosphere will not accelerate climate change -- quite the opposite, though I don't know that the effect will be significant.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- wil421 7y agoWhy would a wind turbine emit greenhouse gasses? During manufacturing? During use? Compared to natural gas, coal, or hydro power?
- sandermvanvliet 7y agoDon’t have a link handy but I’ve read somewhere that the gearboxes leak oil that then evaporates. Most likely not the cleanest stuff in there. Edit: Link 1: https://www.windpowerengineering.com/two-reasons-why-gearboxes-leak/ https://www.windpowerengineering.com/two-reasons-why-gearbox... Link 2: https://www.eastcountymagazine.org/investigation-launched-hydraulic-oil-leaks-ocotillo-wind-facility https://www.eastcountymagazine.org/investigation-launched-hy... Link 3: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-12/wind-power-pollution-turbine-oil-seeps-into-the-land-in-mexico https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-12/wind-powe...
- creato 7y agoIs this really a problem? They probably leak at the same rate as any other machine, which includes almost any other power plant. The total spillage or "evaporation" of all wind turbines is probably not more oil than even a tiny oil spill in an oil field or pipeline. Obviously we should fix a problem here if there is one, but the fact that we're discussing it in the context of larger scale issues is absurd.
- sandermvanvliet 7y agoMost likely not but GP was asking about leakage so hence the links
- kaybe 7y agoInteresting question, seems it's still open but has been found worthy of study. There are probably research groups working on it right now. Review paper (2015): 'Impact of wind-energy generation on climate: A rising spectre' https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032115016457 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136403211... 'Potential climatic impacts and reliability of very large-scale windfarms' https://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16115.short#sec-2 https://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16115.short#sec-2 'Potential climatic impacts and reliability of very large-scale windfarms' https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/2053/2010/acp-10-2053-2010.pdf https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/2053/2010/acp-10-2053-201... edit: There's more! 'Climate model shows large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara increase rain and vegetation' https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00245.1 https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI-D-14-0024... 'Climate Impacts of Large-Scale Wind Farms as Parameterized in a Global Climate Model ' https://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6406/1019 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6406/1019
- tajd 7y agoHero, thanks. We teach a module on renewable energy at my uni and it's interesting to get the big picture perspective on the use of wind turbines.
- account73466 7y agoThanks for the links! The "green ... greeen!" guys just downvoted me to hell.
- kaybe 7y agoThe papers all stress that wind farms are considerably better than fossil fuels no matter what, so 'accelerate' is maybe not the best way to put it. I propose 'influence'. However, the consequences from each technology should still be debatable, and are an interesting question in itself I think. The problems start when questions become political - what are the implications? In the hard sciences we usually don't concern ourselves with that unless we have to, but when discussing sensitive research topics in public one has to be more careful since many people tend to deduce intentions where there were none. (I need to remind myself frequently.) I think your post fell victim to that.
- peteradio 7y agoHow easy to maintain are these? Have they gotten better in the last decade? I see these things failing all the time around me but perhaps they are just shitty and better manufacturing saves the day?
- ajross 7y agoIt's a highly redundant technology. Any turbine is as good as any other in the farm. As long as the economics work out (which is the real question, and I don't have an answer), there's no particular reason to demand perfect reliability for situations where maintenance is expensive. It's just like leaving stale servers to rot in giant data centers.
- macspoofing 7y ago>How easy to maintain are these? The current lifespan of wind turbines is around 20 years (but 15 years is closer to reality). So ... not great.
- tda 7y agoDo you have some sources? All windfarms I know of are designed for at least 25 years. Not many have reached that age yet, so if they last is yet to be seen. The first offshore wind farm Vindeby was decommissioned in 2016 (after 25 years) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindeby_Offshore_Wind_Farm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindeby_Offshore_Wind_Farm In 2015 Yttre Stengrund (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yttre_Stengrund_offshore_wind_farm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yttre_Stengrund_offshore_wind_...) was decommissioned after only 14 years in service. But that was a really small park and the decision to do so was mainly economical as the turbines were rare and thus spare parts expensive. had just a few (<10) and really small (<2MW) turbines. Currently parks are designed/built with perhaps 100x9MW turbines. Because fo the scale differnece, older parks are reach end of life more for economical than purely technical reasons. The same reason why computers only lasted a few years in the early 2000's: they just became so much better so quickly that there was no economic point in holding on to them for more than that.
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- hnburnsy 7y agoTo me at least one trillion in culumative investment does not equal a one trillion dollar industry.
- mac01021 7y agoWhat does, then? Isn't the "value" of an industry normally taken to be the sum of the market caps of all the companies in the industry?
- jtokoph 7y agoMuch of the time it will refer to revenue generated on an annual basis. For example, all wind energy companies might spend $1T this year as an investment, but only bring in $10B in revenue. That would be a $10B market.
- tlb 7y agoBut manufacturing and installing wind turbines would be $1T/year revenue, since that's where their investment goes.
- rukittenme 7y ago$1T in manufacturing not in power generation which is the more important and relevant part of the equation.
- marcosdumay 7y agoThat would be $1T in cumulative revenue, not $1T/year of revenue. It is a large number. But it's a different large number from the headline.
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- tda 7y agoBy far the most wind turbines have been built on land and for good reason: it's much cheaper. As long as there is space/not too many people complaining it makes more sense to build on land. Not sure exactly but on land installed wind is probably ~10x the installed capacity offshore. However on land turbines are pretty much maxed out at about 7,5MW, due to logistical difficulties of getting larger blades, towers and nacelles transported over the road. These limitations don't apply to offshore sites, so the up-scaling continues. In the last few years typical offshore turbines have grown to about 9MW, but that is not the limit. Within a few years we should see 12-15MW turbines being installed, which should bring the cost down. Combined with the better wind conditions offshore (at least around the North Sea) offshore wind may become cheaper than expanding on land.
- bryanlarsen 7y agoIt was my impression that the main reason for building offshore is because the winds are much more steady there. The definition of trade wind is a "permanent prevailing wind"; building someplace with "permanent" winds sounds like a good idea to me.
- throwaway5752 7y agoYes. Land based ones are often on plains or ridges. Steady and unimpeded wind is why aerial and offshore have better EROI.
- agumonkey 7y agohow "stupid" would it be to turn all building roofs as solar surfaces and wind tunnels ?
- xwdv 7y agoVery. The capacity won’t be enough, it will be very expensive and an eyesore with current technology.
- roywiggins 7y agoWind power doesn't scale down well at all.
- thinkcontext 7y agoRooftop solar costs 2x+ as much as utility scale.
- agumonkey 7y agoAny hope of seeing costs go down ?
- mikepurvis 7y agoProbably not. Most of that cost is having a professional sort out the specifics of your particular installation, plus paying the dudes to scramble around on your roof and actually do the work (plus the associated liability). And even once it's all done, you take an efficiency hit because no one's roof will be at the ideal angle the way panels installed at ground level can be.
- cesarb 7y ago> And even once it's all done, you take an efficiency hit because no one's roof will be at the ideal angle the way panels installed at ground level can be. Also, a lot of ground level panels are on single-axis trackers, at least in my country, which boosts efficiency even more.
- hirundo 7y agoHow many birds is it worth sacrificing to build huge wind turbine farms instead of compact nuclear reactors? Is the worst case of a Chernobyl or Fukushima worse than the expected case from square miles of spinning blades?
- OnlineGladiator 7y agoI don't mean to insult your comment, but this is the first time I've heard someone say "think of the birds!" How many birds are the turbines killing and what kind of impact is it having on ecosystems?
- Consultant32452 7y agohttps://www.audubon.org/news/will-wind-turbines-ever-be-safe-birds https://www.audubon.org/news/will-wind-turbines-ever-be-safe... Hundreds of thousands, apparently
- aqme28 7y agoFor comparison, cats kill between 1.4 billion and 3.7 billion birds a year (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/outdoor-cats-kill-between-14-billion-and-37-billion-birds-a-year-study-says/2013/01/31/2504f744-6bbe-11e2-ada0-5ca5fa7ebe79_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/outdo...)
- Consultant32452 7y agoRight, and wind constitutes less than 5% of total energy production. I'm not anti-wind, but we can't pretend massive growth in wind production will have no impact.
- aqme28 7y agoSo what you're saying is that with 100% wind production, it's now millions of birds. That's still about 3 orders of magnitude less of an impact than cats.
- tda 7y agoSo disappointing journalists never understand the difference between power and energy. The opening sentences make me cringe so much I don't even want to read the rest of the article > Last month the American wind industry hit a major milestone — 100 gigawatts of total installed capacity. That's enough electricity to power the state of California and New Jersey combined for one year.
- apcragg 7y agoWhat is wrong with that sentence? As of 2018 there was ~98k MW of installed wind capacity [1]. Reaching 100 GW of installed capacity in 2019 make perfect sense. It seems like it's you that doesn't understand the difference between power (watts) vs. energy (watt-hours / joules) yet are confident enough to call a journalist out even though they are correct. [1](https://gwec.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/GWEC-Global-Wind-Report-2018.pdf https://gwec.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/GWEC-Global-Wind...) Page 29
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- ppf 7y agoThe sentence is literally correct, but misleading. A continuous 100GW might power those two states, but that's not what you get out of a 100GW wind installation. The capacity factor for wind is about 25-30%.
- apcragg 7y agoIt isn't though. Thats how we talk about installed power capacity. The capacity factor is important but seperate. Nobody says we installed a 2.5 MW* wind turbine accounting for capacity factor. They say we installed a 10 MW wind turbine. It is assumed, especially given this publications audience, that the power factor is a seprate point. The person I replied to said that the sentance was so wrong it was "cringy" which is not true.
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- namirez 7y agoProbably the answer is a combination of wind, solar, and nuclear, but if we want to invest in wind, it has to be offshore. The power output of a wind turbine is proportional to wind speed cubed and offshore wind is typically much stronger and more consistent than onshore wind. Probably we can take advantage of the expertise of oil and gas industry with offshore drilling to build offshore wind farms. Also it's safer for wild life. The downside of offshore wind is the higher wear and tear of turbines. Last time I checked, composite delamination of turbine blades was still a problem. Also, it can be hard to recycle composites. Sometimes the only option is to literally burn them or use them as fillers in other products. source: https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759376113/unfurling-the-waste-problem-caused-by-wind-energy https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759376113/unfurling-the-waste...
- m0zg 7y agoThis is nuts. I wonder what the effect of spending $1T on nuclear would be in comparison. I bet it's enough money to get to practical nuclear fusion in a decade, which would largely obviate the need in most other energy generation methods.
- aqme28 7y agoIt's going to take a lot more than $1T and a decade for fusion to be cost-competitive with wind and solar.
- cbmuser 7y agoHow are wind and solar cost-competitive when they can exist in Germany only with extreme high subsidies? Look at the new windfarm called "Wikinger" that Germany built near the island of Ruegen: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore-Windpark_Wikinger https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore-Windpark_Wikinger Cost: 1.4 billion Euros Lifetime: 20 years Power: 350 MW Max. capacity: 0.4 (40%) Price at the electricity stock exchange Leipzig: 36 Euro/MWh Thus: 3500.42436520*36 = 883 million Euros Result: 517 million Euros loss
- wjnc 7y agoInterest in Germany: ~0-1%, expected inflation: 1-2%, terminal value: X unknown (but not 0). Just adding these parameters would change the conclusion of your valuation model significantly. Secondly losses are not subsidies. Subsidies are what governments dole out, losses are for investors and companies.
- hobofan 7y agoI don't know the specifics, but there are subsidies in place through the EEG[0] to prevent such losses. In general energy also seems to be a low-risk business, where if the energy companies would ever loose money, they are either already covered by the government or can sue the government for losses due to changed regulations with a good chance of winning. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Sources_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Source...
- badrabbit 7y agoOil and gas ("energy") companies are investing a lot into wind energy. They know they have to adopt. In the end they just want profits and they have the capital to make the right investments. I really wish the environmentalist movement saw them as just another money hungry corporation instead some evil villain out to destroy the planet. They would love to diversify their revenue stream, now is a good time to work with them because of the huge fossil fuel demand and the political pressure to wind down dependence on it. On a separate note, I have two questions: why don't wind turbinea have more than one "wheel"? And does anyone know if ground tethered floating turbines (like airships) will be commercially viable?
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- 7952 7y agoThe industry seems like a good fit for specialist contractors (many of which also work for oil companies) rather than an integrated oil company. They may have access to lots of capital, but that is hardly unique. Arguably their real talent is dealing with market volatility, which could come to renewables when strike prices and subsidy levels get reduced.
- badrabbit 7y agoThey already own large wind farms and similar investments. It is already happenig. Regarding capital,oil and gas has very very deep pockets possibly second to actual governments. And their existing positio as supplier also gives them an advantage to be able to migrate existing consumers to renewables.
- shmerl 7y ago> another money hungry corporation instead some evil villain out to destroy the planet. Greed can destroy the planet all the same. So money hungry is hardly an excuse for evil behavior.
- badrabbit 7y ago
- jokoon 7y agono, we need more nuclear energy