4 ms·
What does "net-zero" mean in this context? I would have assumed of course that wind turbines are net negative emissions, even factoring in the construction and
by aqme28 1y ago
What does "net-zero" mean in this context?
I would have assumed of course that wind turbines are net negative emissions, even factoring in the construction and materials.
Do they mean net-zero in materials and construction alone? Because that sounds impossible.
- mistercow 1y agoWhat they seem to be claiming is that because the wood itself contains more carbon that is used to produce the turbine, they have net negative carbon emissions before accounting for actual energy production. That seems pretty dubious to me. After the turbine’s thirty year life, what happens to that carbon? At any rate, if it’s true that it takes 90% less carbon to produce in the first place, setting aside the whole “wood contains carbon” thing, that’s pretty cool.
- boxed 1y agoIf you build enough of these sustained, the total amount of CO2 bound it them could be significant. Similar to growing forests or restoring peat bogs. But yea, growing forests is equally suspicious as a lot of carbon sink forests have turned out to be cut down...
- aziaziazi 1y agoThat’s a great project and kudos to the team, meanwhile : > After the turbine’s thirty year life, what happens to that carbon? Those curved boards are probably mixed with epoxy or another polymer, making it a bad candidate for recycling in other wood application (paper, osb boards…), compared to first hand row trees. We’ll probably "valorize" it in incinerators.
- wizardOfScience 1y agoI think they plan to cut down the tower and saw it into joists basically. The tower wall should be thick enough to allow for that. You will loose some material ofcourse but most of it should be possible to use in construction.
- peterpost2 1y agoWould the epoxy not have degraded over time? Making it quite a bit weaker?
- potato3732842 1y agoProbably doesn't matter all that much, especially for interior material that wasn't exposed to the elements. Worst case you're probably talking strength on th order of chip board which is still useful.
- EasyMark 1y agoI would still assume it could be sawed up and turned into building material, highly unlikely anything but the outside has any appreciable deterioration
- Moldoteck 1y ago"what happens to that carbon?" - biomass))
- EasyMark 1y agowood is carbon neutral by it's very nature, however obviously this isn't because energy is needed to process it into a useable form
- boxed 1y ago> I would have assumed of course that wind turbines are net negative emissions, even factoring in the construction and materials. It's net much-less-than-coal and much-less-than-oil, but it's not zero and certainly not negative. I think you're confusing "if we add this to the grid we subtract the carbon emissions compared to the current system" with "this pulls carbon from the atmosphere". Those are very different things.
- mppm 1y agoPresumably they mean that the CO2 captured in the wood of the tower can offset the manufacture of blades and other components at some point in the future. Not that reaching net zero in wind power is an important milestone or anything. From their technology page: > The life-cycle emissions from modern wind power plants made of steel are about 4–7 grammes carbon dioxide per kWh. Building the tower in wood lowers the emissions from the wind power plant by approximately 30 percent per kWh. That would put wind power some 50-100x below fossil fuels already. Additional improvements are always nice to have, but not really a big selling point.
- EasyMark 1y agoIt's marketing terminology since wood obviously takes a lot of energy to process, but I assume they mean it's still a fraction of what metal version uses.