This is a very well studied topic. Here's a good intro, for wind turbines specifically: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/06/whats-the-carbon-footprint-of

This is a very well studied topic. Here's a good intro, for wind turbines specifically: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/06/whats-the-carbon-footprint-of-a-wind-turbine/ https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/06/whats-the-carbon-... In short, despite those costs, over the entire lifetime of the wind turbine this adds up to 5 - 26g of CO2 per kWh, as opposed to 437 - 758g (for gas) or 675 - 1689g (for coal). So yes, it's not literally _zero_ CO2, but it is a 97.4% / 98.7% reduction in CO2 compared to gas/coal respectively. The same applies to most other similar questions: yes, there are lots of small non-zero factors, and it would be great to minimize those, but they're dwarfed by the massive emissions of the current approach. The end goal here is _net_ zero, not strictly zero emissions output. Although there will still be some emissions there, they will be far far lower than today, and the remaining emissions are intended to be offset through all sorts of measures like increasing greenery, emission improvements in those production steps themselves, direct carbon capture, etc etc etc.