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Wind farms can offset their emissions within two years, new study shows
- butternick 3y agoBut how much energy is used to create the wind farm?
- floren 3y agoThat'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.
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- yareal 3y agoA lot less than they create? Like, if it was a negative return on investment, energy wise, no one would be building wind farms. Wind turbines produce whole integer MW, which is way more than they cost to make.
- pedroma 3y ago>negative return on investment, energy wise, no one would be building wind farms I don't think it's this simple considering politics is usually involved. But if it was a simple profit question I still don't think people would be building wind farms.
- Alupis 3y agoExactly 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...
- mikeyouse 3y agoWind 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".
- Alupis 3y agoThey 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.
- mikeyouse 3y ago"Wind can't be the entire solution" is such a different statement than whatever this misinformed smug dismissal is trying to get at.
- Alupis 3y agoIf 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.
- verall 3y agoI think it's fun to imagine that this solution you're miming at is closer to soylent green rather than only-viable-through-subsidies nuclear.
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- yareal 3y agoI didn't speak to profit. I spoke to energy return.
- pedroma 3y agoMy answer applies to both cases actually. 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.
- andyferris 3y agoI 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).
- garbageman 3y agoMaybe 20 years ago. On-shore wind and solar are currently the cheapest practical way to make electricity based on LCOE. https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/electricity_generation/pdf/AEO2023_LCOE_report.pdf https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/electricity_generation/pdf/...
- pedroma 3y agoI'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? - 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."
- uoaei 3y ago> 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.
- bastawhiz 2y agoWho cares? What matters is the emissions, which is exactly what this article is about.
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- telepathy 3y agoTheir OWN emissions? Wow...
- christkv 3y agoThere is still the problem of recycling the blades. https://theconversation.com/wind-turbine-blades-inside-the-battle-to-overcome-their-waste-problem-217704#:~:text=Whereas%20most%20of%20a%20wind,dumped%20in%20landfill%20or%20incinerated https://theconversation.com/wind-turbine-blades-inside-the-b....
- xnx 3y agoWhy do blades need to be recycled? What's the harm in piling them up on empty land until someone finds use for them (or not)?
- vuln 3y agoCould take the same route with nuclear waste imho.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoExcept old turbine blades tend not to leak out and make surrounding land unlivable by humans.
- MetaWhirledPeas 3y agoThis 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.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoI 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.
- xnx 3y agoThat's an amazing investment if it can pay for itself entirely in 2 years and keep generating money after that.
- pedroma 3y agoThat 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.
- SV_BubbleTime 2y agoIt says “can” and op said “if”. Is not one else seeing how these posts are pandering?
- tills13 2y agoIn a moral society, paying off the environmental deficit of production is as important as the monetary deficit.
- rcstank 2y agoWho defines what moral is
- jandrese 2y agoWhile 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.
- caf 2y agoIt'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.
- ggm 3y agoA 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.
- xenonite 2y agoMassive amounts of carbon fiber used in wind blades is coming from … oil. So same problem here. And it becomes unusable toxic waste.
- phero_cnstrcts 2y agoThese studies are funded by the companies anyway. Can’t ever trust them.
- XorNot 2y agoWe don't burn the wind turbine blades when we use them, nor when they break. The scale of issue in dealing with a bunch of solid waste you can just bury compared to climate change is insignificant.
- xcskier56 2y agoWell... technically... some people are starting to https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/articles/carbon-rivers-makes-wind-turbine-blade-recycling-and-upcycling-reality-support 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
- PaulKeeble 2y agoAt 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.
- Meegul 2y agoThis 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.
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- genman 2y agoYou 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.
- freeone3000 2y agoYou 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.
- pfdietz 2y agoThe 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.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago> “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?
- pgalvin 2y agoIt’s clumsy wording. I took the intended meaning to be: “This data is from New Zealand, replacing gas turbines, but many countries will also be replacing fossil fuel generators and have similar numbers.”
- perilunar 2y agoMostly. You can power gas turbines with biogas. You could also power them with hydrogen or ammonia, but i don't know if anyone does.
- meristohm 2y agoWhat's the embedded-energy cost in wind energy? https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2024/03/how-to-escape-from-the-iron-age/ https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2024/03/how-to-escape-from... 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.
- stephen_g 2y agoIs 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.
- sub7 2y agocan you bring the birds back though?
- hollerith 2y agoThey grow back by themselves.
- axblount 2y agoMany more birds will be harmed by unchecked climate change than wind farms.
- thelastgallon 2y agoCats kill 1.3 - 1.4 billion birds/year. Buildings 1 billion/year. Glass windows? Wind farms - 1 million per year.
- anamax 2y agoCats rarely kill large raptors.
- audunw 2y agoThey 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.
- anamax 2y agoDomestic 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.
- dools 2y ago"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.
- stephen_g 2y agoNo, 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.
- audunw 2y agoIn 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.
- baseline-shift 2y agoIt 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.
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- Analemma_ 2y agoYeah, 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.
- mrguyorama 2y agoBut refuting them doesn't matter, because they just parrot the original line anyway.
- nucrow 2y agoThe 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.
- freeone3000 2y agoIt 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.
- nucrow 2y ago
- DrSchulz 2y agoBut it is stupid to destroy the forests for this PLASTIC things
- t0bia_s 2y agoMeanwhile 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. https://www.bild.de/regional/frankfurt/politik-inland/kaum-noch-zu-stoppen-deutscher-maerchenwald-wird-fuer-windraeder-zerstoert-86094640.bild.html https://www.bild.de/regional/frankfurt/politik-inland/kaum-n...
- deepbluev7 2y agoPlease 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/2024-01/v4_ergaenzungsbescheid_221220_reinhardswald_anonymisiert_vk.pdf#page=141 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-waldverluste-in-deutschland/ 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-der-deutschen-waldflaeche-weg-31645904.html 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.