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"Making net-zero wind power possible"? Is that trying to tackle the non-problem that was spun up a while ago by oil companies in propaganda pieces like the Lan

"Making net-zero wind power possible"? Is that trying to tackle the non-problem that was spun up a while ago by oil companies in propaganda pieces like the Landman show on TV? It's a non-problem. The lifecycle assessment of wind turbines today, which is the accounting for the actual emissions of the lifetime of a wind turbine, factoring in: creation, installation, maintenance, even the disposing of it, was clocked to be offset after 5.3 months of running the turbine (according to this study: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.9b01030 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.9b01030 ; and every other one I could find finds the same ballpark)

Scarblac 1y ago
But are there any iron mines, steel plants etc that actually work on electricity? Otherwise you can calculate any offset you want, but it'll be a paper exercise.
- like_any_other 1y ago
  It won't be paper as long as there's coal & oil electricity generation, that won't have to be burned thanks to a wind turbine.
Bluestein 1y ago
> The lifecycle assessment of wind turbines today, which is the accounting for the actual emissions of the lifetime of a wind turbine, factoring in: creation, installation, maintenance, even the disposing of it, was clocked to be offset after 5.3 months of running the turbine Very informative. Thank you.-
anticodon 1y ago
What about more complex and expensive infrastructure required for balancing uneven electricity output?
- WinstonSmith84 1y ago
  yes - RE Spain a month ago ..
  - coolcase 1y ago
    Was a root cause done on that? Was it due to wind power?
    - passwordoops 1y ago
      No, the study is still ongoing. I can't find the link (and Google is functionally useless for finding original links) but Spain's power authority held an update last week where they gave a summary of events (where the failure first happened, where it spread to, etc) and if I understood correctly will have non-Spanish/French/Portuguese experts do the full investigation. Still a ways away from understanding what happened
    - arghwhat 1y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackou... The root cause is not known, but Spain was producing excess power (primarily solar) at the time around the disconnect. Some fluctations were seen, then supply started to disconnect from the grid in Spain, leading to sudden loss of 2.2GW of power. In Spain, automatic load shedding then happened to try to recover, but it was too little too late as neighboring countries detached from Spain to protect their own grids. Nothing about this sounds like an issue with renewables.
    - Moldoteck 1y ago
      Trigger suspected to be one substation https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/power-generation-loss-spains-blackout-started-granada-badajoz-seville-2025-05-14/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/power-generation-los... The blackout itself is suspected to be amplified by ren https://montelnews.com/de/news/96607ac1-dd73-4c23-bb47-a7c2ad1a711e/spaniens-hertzinfarkt-warum-gingen-die-lichter-aus-2 https://montelnews.com/de/news/96607ac1-dd73-4c23-bb47-a7c2a... "Die Experten betonen, dass erneuerbare Anlagen das Problem nicht nur nicht abfedern konnten, sondern möglicherweise verstärkt haben."
belorn 1y ago
Please note that the study takes the energy that the wind turbine produce and calculate how much green house gases a natural gas-fired power plant would create producing the same amount of energy.
- once_inc 1y ago
  Without having checked the study because I can't open the link on this machine: does it also take recycling of the metals into account? There's also cost in placement (which are very significant in places like the North Sea for instance), and digging up the rare earth minerals and such.
  - belorn 1y ago
    No, no mentioning of recycling. It only look at average energy output, converts it into what a natural gas power plant would do to get the same amount, and compare it to an estimation of green house emissions from producing the turbine. They do mention creating the estimation of production emissions from 28 wind turbine LCA studies of 22 on- and 6 offshore locations, so it sound like they include placement costs, but I can't say for sure. on- and offshore turbines may not be built identically. The fundamental question that the study ask is if the wind turbine would replace an existing natural gas-fired power plant, how much less green house gases would it produce compared to keeping the natural gas-fired power plant, and how does that compared to the production emissions of the wind turbine.
    - cyberax 1y ago
      Why not a nuclear power plant? And how about the battery backup that the wind power needs to be reliable?
      - bluGill 1y ago
        Nuclear is so expensive the only reason anyone builds them is governments wants a source of nuclear trained people around for military purposes (either bombs or navy ships). Battery backup isn't a needed as much as many thing in the real world. Those gas power plants we already have are not going anywhere, so we still use them when there isn't much wind. Though battery is something we should be building instead (and are).
jiehong 1y ago
At least wood is more recyclable, so why not. Thanks for the study link!
- twelvechairs 1y ago
  Is it though? Steel is very easy to recycle. Engineered timber that is full of various glues and fire retardants not so much.
  - moffkalast 1y ago
    I thought the main problem with recycling them were the fiber composite blades? If they keep those but just swap the metal tower with a wooden one they've achieved exactly nothing in practice.
    - stephen_g 1y ago
      Well replacing the tower reduces embodied emissions from the steel. Sure that's not as big as an issue if the steel was already recycled (and would be recycled again) using an electric arc furnace powered by renewables, but the wood is actually negative since it's storing carbon while it's not decomposing. The blades themselves isn't really much of an issue if you actually compare it to fossil fuels - for example, coal fly ash was 18% of all waste generated in Australia around 2019 (this is likely a bit less now as one or two major coal plants have since been decommissioned). I think it's astronomically unlikely that wind turbine blades would ever be that kind of proportion of a country's waste, but it was just a normal thing for coal. And gas and oil have a similar problem, it's just harder to see since it's fine particulate matter belched into the air instead of heavier ash that you have to deal with! 1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-10/coal-ash-has-become-one-of-australias-biggest-waste-problems/10886866 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-10/coal-ash-has-become-o...
      - nabla9 1y ago
        "The research indicates that there will be 43 million tonnes of blade waste worldwide by 2050" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0956053X17300491 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09560...
internet_points 1y ago
does that number take into account the area of nature paved to create roads for transporting those huge masts?
- os2warpman 1y ago
  Because they require so little, infrequent, maintenance it makes very little sense to pave asphalt roads to wind tower locations. For the vast majority of wind farms, dirt or gravel roads connect masts to pre-existing infrastructure. The largest wind farm in the US is the Alta Wind Energy Center: https://maps.app.goo.gl/rPjUGSTN979dfUoDA https://maps.app.goo.gl/rPjUGSTN979dfUoDA The largest wind farm in Europe is the Markbygden Wind Farm: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ETVeMXpf1uPieTct8 https://maps.app.goo.gl/ETVeMXpf1uPieTct8 Dirt and gravel roads. I'm not saying that there have never been roads paved to create wind farms. I am saying that the number of roads that have paved is so small that it is irrelevant.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    looking at the wind farm from a certain elevation reminds me of west texas where each of the dots is a gas well instead of a turbine. then my brain went hard left and imagined the wind turbines being used to pump gas in some insane reason
    - imtringued 1y ago
      As weird as it may sound, but it is more efficient to refine crude oil with renewable energy, because it means that you get more usable gasoline, diesel, etc as the end product. The reason is that the refinery output is easier to store.
  - internet_points 1y ago
    Can't speak for the US, but that is not the case in Norway. There have been massive protests due to the amount of nature destroyed. There are some before-after sliders on https://www-nrk-no.translate.goog/dokumentar/her-er-norges-storste-naturinngrep-1.16689009?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=no&_x_tr_pto=wapp#Rogaland https://www-nrk-no.translate.goog/dokumentar/her-er-norges-s... (scroll around for "wind") that give an indication, although the most striking difference is experience by the people who used to go for hikes in remote places where there are now immense wind parks. The wind companies love building them up in the previously-untouched mountain regions since I guess height = more power, also less NIMBY neighbours. https://www.google.no/maps/place/Buheii/@58.6554134,6.8870617,1630m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x4639bbd25c97ef6b:0x59cbdc79a6342b84!8m2!3d58.6536001!4d6.9065008!16s%2Fg%2F1tcvgnxr?hl=no&entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDUyMS4wIKXMDSoJLDEwMjExNDU1SAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.no/maps/place/Buheii/@58.6554134,6.887061... had zero roads a decade ago, now it's all roads. And with roads come traffic and people and cabins and tourism and more roads. Now they're saying we need more wind parks for AI data centers (a few years ago it was for crypto). We're tearing down nature so we can keep growing our energy use while staying "green".
cbmuser 1y ago
They still need conventional power plants for backup which will make the life-cycle electricity emissions of the whole system much dirtier.
thrance 1y ago
But building and installing the wind turbine still requires some emissions. The wind turbine doesn't remove carbon from the air, so the offset you are talking about is not a real offset, it's only relative to how much CO2 wasn't released in the atmosphere by a more polluting source of power that would have been used instead. Wooden wind turbines would allow sequestrating carbon (in the cut trees that make their structures) and potentially compensate the carbon necessary to assemble and install the wind turbine, if the trees are replanted.
EasyMark 1y ago
My partner was so wound up after that speech on landman. I was like "darling I love the show for braindead entertainment but that is a exceedingly bad take on wind power from a show that obviously is meant to appeal to rural folks who don't want to feel guilty or do anything about fossil fuels". Here's the quote from the show for those who haven't seen it “Do you have any idea how much diesel they have to burn to mix the concrete or make that steel? Or haul this sh-t out here, and put it together with a 450 foot crane? You want to guess how much oil it takes to lubricate that f-ing thing, or winterize it? In its 20-year lifespan, it won’t offset the carbon footprint of making it. And don’t get me started on solar panels and the lithium in your Tesla battery…”
ukoki 1y ago
> was clocked to be offset after 5.3 months of running the turbine .. if the power would have otherwise been generated using non-renewable sources. But even when (if?) electricity generation is switched to 100% renewable, we will _still_ need to reduce carbon emissions to reduce climate change, so reducing carbon emissions invovled in the creation and maintanence of renewable electricity seems like a good idea to me.
- Rygian 1y ago
  If your grid is already 100% renewables, you have other stuff to work on before that becomes an issue. For example, transforming industries that depend on oil byproducts.

Scarblac 1y ago

But are there any iron mines, steel plants etc that actually work on electricity? Otherwise you can calculate any offset you want, but it'll be a paper exercise.

like_any_other 1y ago
It won't be paper as long as there's coal & oil electricity generation, that won't have to be burned thanks to a wind turbine.

Bluestein 1y ago

> The lifecycle assessment of wind turbines today, which is the accounting for the actual emissions of the lifetime of a wind turbine, factoring in: creation, installation, maintenance, even the disposing of it, was clocked to be offset after 5.3 months of running the turbine Very informative. Thank you.-

anticodon 1y ago

What about more complex and expensive infrastructure required for balancing uneven electricity output?

WinstonSmith84 1y ago
yes - RE Spain a month ago ..
- coolcase 1y ago
  Was a root cause done on that? Was it due to wind power?
  - passwordoops 1y ago
    No, the study is still ongoing. I can't find the link (and Google is functionally useless for finding original links) but Spain's power authority held an update last week where they gave a summary of events (where the failure first happened, where it spread to, etc) and if I understood correctly will have non-Spanish/French/Portuguese experts do the full investigation. Still a ways away from understanding what happened
  - arghwhat 1y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackou... The root cause is not known, but Spain was producing excess power (primarily solar) at the time around the disconnect. Some fluctations were seen, then supply started to disconnect from the grid in Spain, leading to sudden loss of 2.2GW of power. In Spain, automatic load shedding then happened to try to recover, but it was too little too late as neighboring countries detached from Spain to protect their own grids. Nothing about this sounds like an issue with renewables.
  - Moldoteck 1y ago
    Trigger suspected to be one substation https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/power-generation-loss-spains-blackout-started-granada-badajoz-seville-2025-05-14/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/power-generation-los... The blackout itself is suspected to be amplified by ren https://montelnews.com/de/news/96607ac1-dd73-4c23-bb47-a7c2ad1a711e/spaniens-hertzinfarkt-warum-gingen-die-lichter-aus-2 https://montelnews.com/de/news/96607ac1-dd73-4c23-bb47-a7c2a... "Die Experten betonen, dass erneuerbare Anlagen das Problem nicht nur nicht abfedern konnten, sondern möglicherweise verstärkt haben."

belorn 1y ago

Please note that the study takes the energy that the wind turbine produce and calculate how much green house gases a natural gas-fired power plant would create producing the same amount of energy.

once_inc 1y ago
Without having checked the study because I can't open the link on this machine: does it also take recycling of the metals into account? There's also cost in placement (which are very significant in places like the North Sea for instance), and digging up the rare earth minerals and such.
- belorn 1y ago
  No, no mentioning of recycling. It only look at average energy output, converts it into what a natural gas power plant would do to get the same amount, and compare it to an estimation of green house emissions from producing the turbine. They do mention creating the estimation of production emissions from 28 wind turbine LCA studies of 22 on- and 6 offshore locations, so it sound like they include placement costs, but I can't say for sure. on- and offshore turbines may not be built identically. The fundamental question that the study ask is if the wind turbine would replace an existing natural gas-fired power plant, how much less green house gases would it produce compared to keeping the natural gas-fired power plant, and how does that compared to the production emissions of the wind turbine.
  - cyberax 1y ago
    Why not a nuclear power plant? And how about the battery backup that the wind power needs to be reliable?
    - bluGill 1y ago
      Nuclear is so expensive the only reason anyone builds them is governments wants a source of nuclear trained people around for military purposes (either bombs or navy ships). Battery backup isn't a needed as much as many thing in the real world. Those gas power plants we already have are not going anywhere, so we still use them when there isn't much wind. Though battery is something we should be building instead (and are).

jiehong 1y ago

At least wood is more recyclable, so why not. Thanks for the study link!

twelvechairs 1y ago
Is it though? Steel is very easy to recycle. Engineered timber that is full of various glues and fire retardants not so much.
- moffkalast 1y ago
  I thought the main problem with recycling them were the fiber composite blades? If they keep those but just swap the metal tower with a wooden one they've achieved exactly nothing in practice.
  - stephen_g 1y ago
    Well replacing the tower reduces embodied emissions from the steel. Sure that's not as big as an issue if the steel was already recycled (and would be recycled again) using an electric arc furnace powered by renewables, but the wood is actually negative since it's storing carbon while it's not decomposing. The blades themselves isn't really much of an issue if you actually compare it to fossil fuels - for example, coal fly ash was 18% of all waste generated in Australia around 2019 (this is likely a bit less now as one or two major coal plants have since been decommissioned). I think it's astronomically unlikely that wind turbine blades would ever be that kind of proportion of a country's waste, but it was just a normal thing for coal. And gas and oil have a similar problem, it's just harder to see since it's fine particulate matter belched into the air instead of heavier ash that you have to deal with! 1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-10/coal-ash-has-become-one-of-australias-biggest-waste-problems/10886866 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-10/coal-ash-has-become-o...
    - nabla9 1y ago
      "The research indicates that there will be 43 million tonnes of blade waste worldwide by 2050" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0956053X17300491 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09560...

internet_points 1y ago

does that number take into account the area of nature paved to create roads for transporting those huge masts?

os2warpman 1y ago
Because they require so little, infrequent, maintenance it makes very little sense to pave asphalt roads to wind tower locations. For the vast majority of wind farms, dirt or gravel roads connect masts to pre-existing infrastructure. The largest wind farm in the US is the Alta Wind Energy Center: https://maps.app.goo.gl/rPjUGSTN979dfUoDA https://maps.app.goo.gl/rPjUGSTN979dfUoDA The largest wind farm in Europe is the Markbygden Wind Farm: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ETVeMXpf1uPieTct8 https://maps.app.goo.gl/ETVeMXpf1uPieTct8 Dirt and gravel roads. I'm not saying that there have never been roads paved to create wind farms. I am saying that the number of roads that have paved is so small that it is irrelevant.
- dylan604 1y ago
  looking at the wind farm from a certain elevation reminds me of west texas where each of the dots is a gas well instead of a turbine. then my brain went hard left and imagined the wind turbines being used to pump gas in some insane reason
  - imtringued 1y ago
    As weird as it may sound, but it is more efficient to refine crude oil with renewable energy, because it means that you get more usable gasoline, diesel, etc as the end product. The reason is that the refinery output is easier to store.
- internet_points 1y ago
  Can't speak for the US, but that is not the case in Norway. There have been massive protests due to the amount of nature destroyed. There are some before-after sliders on https://www-nrk-no.translate.goog/dokumentar/her-er-norges-storste-naturinngrep-1.16689009?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=no&_x_tr_pto=wapp#Rogaland https://www-nrk-no.translate.goog/dokumentar/her-er-norges-s... (scroll around for "wind") that give an indication, although the most striking difference is experience by the people who used to go for hikes in remote places where there are now immense wind parks. The wind companies love building them up in the previously-untouched mountain regions since I guess height = more power, also less NIMBY neighbours. https://www.google.no/maps/place/Buheii/@58.6554134,6.8870617,1630m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x4639bbd25c97ef6b:0x59cbdc79a6342b84!8m2!3d58.6536001!4d6.9065008!16s%2Fg%2F1tcvgnxr?hl=no&entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDUyMS4wIKXMDSoJLDEwMjExNDU1SAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.no/maps/place/Buheii/@58.6554134,6.887061... had zero roads a decade ago, now it's all roads. And with roads come traffic and people and cabins and tourism and more roads. Now they're saying we need more wind parks for AI data centers (a few years ago it was for crypto). We're tearing down nature so we can keep growing our energy use while staying "green".

cbmuser 1y ago

They still need conventional power plants for backup which will make the life-cycle electricity emissions of the whole system much dirtier.

thrance 1y ago

But building and installing the wind turbine still requires some emissions. The wind turbine doesn't remove carbon from the air, so the offset you are talking about is not a real offset, it's only relative to how much CO2 wasn't released in the atmosphere by a more polluting source of power that would have been used instead. Wooden wind turbines would allow sequestrating carbon (in the cut trees that make their structures) and potentially compensate the carbon necessary to assemble and install the wind turbine, if the trees are replanted.

EasyMark 1y ago

My partner was so wound up after that speech on landman. I was like "darling I love the show for braindead entertainment but that is a exceedingly bad take on wind power from a show that obviously is meant to appeal to rural folks who don't want to feel guilty or do anything about fossil fuels". Here's the quote from the show for those who haven't seen it “Do you have any idea how much diesel they have to burn to mix the concrete or make that steel? Or haul this sh-t out here, and put it together with a 450 foot crane? You want to guess how much oil it takes to lubricate that f-ing thing, or winterize it? In its 20-year lifespan, it won’t offset the carbon footprint of making it. And don’t get me started on solar panels and the lithium in your Tesla battery…”

ukoki 1y ago

> was clocked to be offset after 5.3 months of running the turbine .. if the power would have otherwise been generated using non-renewable sources. But even when (if?) electricity generation is switched to 100% renewable, we will _still_ need to reduce carbon emissions to reduce climate change, so reducing carbon emissions invovled in the creation and maintanence of renewable electricity seems like a good idea to me.

Rygian 1y ago
If your grid is already 100% renewables, you have other stuff to work on before that becomes an issue. For example, transforming industries that depend on oil byproducts.