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> production of wind energy is crucial for meeting science-based climate goals What exactly is a science-based climate goal? And why would wind energy be esse

> production of wind energy is crucial for meeting science-based climate goals What exactly is a science-based climate goal? And why would wind energy be essential for it? I hear people talk about their solar installations all the time, and it seems like the anti-nuclear sentiment is finally wearing off too. I don't think I've ever heard anything positive about one of these windmills. It seems to be a fairly straightforward wealth transfer from tax payers and utility consumers to the windmill people. Property values go down and electricity prices go up. Windmill people move on to collect the next subsidy.

WD-42 1y ago
Property values? Do you live on an oil rig or something?
- bix6 1y ago
  They’re just not a big fan of windmill people ok?!? ;)
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  There are some who think windmills unsightly, which I don’t understand at all. The old style associated with Dutch stereotypes is cute and picturesque, and the modern type futuristic. If I see windmills within eyeshot, my first thought is, “oh cool, the people here really have it figured out.” Of all the things that I might see on the horizon, windmills are among those that would bother me the least.
  - WD-42 1y ago
    Ok but this is about offshore wind
bix6 1y ago
It’s one based on science instead of whatever someone finds convenient. So sub 2 C. Why would wind not be essential for it? Wind is free just like solar. Some places have amazing wind. Wind costs have declined dramatically so it’s a viable piece of the mix.
mikeyouse 1y ago
They're ~the cheapest power options available and provide decades and decades of zero-marginal-cost energy. Building a wind turbine today has about the same all-in "LCOE" as running existing nuclear plants. Building new nukes results in electricity that's about 4x as expensive as building turbines instead. Not to say we shouldn't build more nuke plants, but they're extraordinarily expensive to build and have construction timelines measured in decades so it's nearly impossible to make them pencil out on a per-kwh basis when compared to wind or solar + batteries that can be deployed and commissioned in 6 months.
- wakawaka28 1y ago
  >They're ~the cheapest power options available and provide decades and decades of zero-marginal-cost energy. It's not zero-marginal-cost energy because they do need maintenance. But I'm more interested in knowing where your lifespan idea comes from. I have seen multiple sources agree that wind turbines are expected to last 20ish years, after which they must at least be taken down and refurbished, if not cut into pieces and buried (as they are not recyclable). >Building new nukes results in electricity that's about 4x as expensive as building turbines instead. This sounds impossible, especially if you count land value, maintenance, grid stability measures that are required to deal with flaky power sources, etc.
  - mikeyouse 1y ago
    There’s standard maintenance as with anything mechanical but most importantly for energy - they don’t burn a fuel that is subject to supply/demand, international relations, or shortages. “Decades and decades” would satisfy your 20-yr scenario but more realistically, modern turbines from Vestas have 30-yr lifespans (which are often exceeded) and the newest gen GE turbines come with 40-yr lifespans. There are inherent issues with LCOE but it’s the ‘least bad’ metric we have to compare energy sources. As of 2022, it looked like this: https://www.powerengineeringint.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/BNEF.jpg https://www.powerengineeringint.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/... With onshore wind about $0.04/kwh and nuclear more like $0.22/kwh. Which sounds outlandish until you realize that PPAs for wind auctions are regularly under $0.03 now and Hinkley C is going to cost something like $50 billion for the two reactors and the rate guaranteed to the owners is north of $0.18 now which will return them something terrible like 7% IRR.
shadowgovt 1y ago
For what it's worth: one of the reasons Google has a datacenter in Iowa (of all places) is that there's a windfarm out there making up something like 60% of the local power generation. That makes the power super cheap (and with all the land they have, that windfarm can continue to scale). If Google's putting their money into it, I suspect there's more to the wind story than "wealth transfer from tax payers and consumers to the windmill people."
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  Same in the Netherlands; companies like Google, Microsoft etc invest in offshore power alongside the government and energy companies. Unfortunately this also means they "claim" a percentage of its capacity for newly built datacenters, meaning that it's not so much replacing non-renewable energy sources as adding to total production.
tovej 1y ago
Wind power is among the cheapest sources of electricity, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_sourc... Wind power also has the benefit that it keeps the carbon in the ground and isn't contributing to the massive climate crisis that humanity and the earth's ecosystems are facing. And there's no direct waste from energy production.
dralley 1y ago
They pay for themselves in a couple of years (even without subsidies) and tend to produce peak power during periods when solar is offline (e.g. at night or cloudy days). Farmers like them because they don't take up much space and they provide revenue independent of how well their crops do, which varies wildly year to year. It's cheaper than burning fossil fuels (though not quite as cheap as solar) Adding wind to the network does not make electricity prices go up (unless you do something stupid like shut down all your nuclear plants at the same time). That's nonsense. It's maybe not quite as cheap if you factor in the storage requirements to build up the grid "properly", but still cheaper than coal at the very least.
- onetimeusename 1y ago
  > They pay for themselves in a couple of years (even without subsidies) Do you have a source on this?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - worik 1y ago
    https://www.turbinehub.com/post/how-long-does-a-wind-farm-take-to-pay-for-itself-off https://www.turbinehub.com/post/how-long-does-a-wind-farm-ta...
    - dralley 1y ago
      It's also worth mentioning that, while I'm not anti-nuclear on principle, the economic return on nuclear projects ranges somewhere between "multiple decades" and "never" - and there's a large empty gap on the timescale of a decade between spending most of that money and starting to receive dividends. And you'd better be running it 100% At least with solar and wind the buildout takes a few weeks or months, and you can start collecting even with a partial buildout.
      - Gud 1y ago
thuridas 1y ago
Electricity prices go up? Are you blaming the windmills? It should you blame the new AI data centers And windmills are profitable by themselves. And reduces foreign imports with increasing taxes on this goods. If we removed all subsidies coal would be the real affected. I am not sure about property value but burning gas next to homes creating health problems to power Elon musk data centers surely doesn't help. The dark fumes from coal, gas or oil are going to affect it.
AftHurrahWinch 1y ago
As usual, the facts are in the linked report not in the journalist's summary. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nrMSJOxI6Iqw6HRKtnvWjOkj3tp_gCRE/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nrMSJOxI6Iqw6HRKtnvWjOkj3tp... It's more precise, avoiding that strange construction, "science-based". If I understand correctly, linguists call these productive analogies (?), where we start producing more of them by analogy to some root, so: Faith-based -> Community-based -> Evidence-based -> Plant-based -> Science-based Or some other hypothetical inheritance chain.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
cyberax 1y ago
> What exactly is a science-based climate goal? And why would wind energy be essential for it? Land-based wind power is OK-ish. It's susceptible to renewable droughts, but it's fine as long as it's just a part of the mix. But the offshore wind power is pretty much the _only_ reliable renewable, outside of classic hydro and exotics like tidal power or geothermal. Offshore wind generators are pretty much guaranteed to always produce at least _some_ power due to diurnal wind patterns.

WD-42 1y ago

Property values? Do you live on an oil rig or something?

bix6 1y ago
They’re just not a big fan of windmill people ok?!? ;)
cosmic_cheese 1y ago
There are some who think windmills unsightly, which I don’t understand at all. The old style associated with Dutch stereotypes is cute and picturesque, and the modern type futuristic. If I see windmills within eyeshot, my first thought is, “oh cool, the people here really have it figured out.” Of all the things that I might see on the horizon, windmills are among those that would bother me the least.
- WD-42 1y ago
  Ok but this is about offshore wind

bix6 1y ago

It’s one based on science instead of whatever someone finds convenient. So sub 2 C. Why would wind not be essential for it? Wind is free just like solar. Some places have amazing wind. Wind costs have declined dramatically so it’s a viable piece of the mix.

mikeyouse 1y ago

They're ~the cheapest power options available and provide decades and decades of zero-marginal-cost energy. Building a wind turbine today has about the same all-in "LCOE" as running existing nuclear plants. Building new nukes results in electricity that's about 4x as expensive as building turbines instead. Not to say we shouldn't build more nuke plants, but they're extraordinarily expensive to build and have construction timelines measured in decades so it's nearly impossible to make them pencil out on a per-kwh basis when compared to wind or solar + batteries that can be deployed and commissioned in 6 months.

wakawaka28 1y ago
>They're ~the cheapest power options available and provide decades and decades of zero-marginal-cost energy. It's not zero-marginal-cost energy because they do need maintenance. But I'm more interested in knowing where your lifespan idea comes from. I have seen multiple sources agree that wind turbines are expected to last 20ish years, after which they must at least be taken down and refurbished, if not cut into pieces and buried (as they are not recyclable). >Building new nukes results in electricity that's about 4x as expensive as building turbines instead. This sounds impossible, especially if you count land value, maintenance, grid stability measures that are required to deal with flaky power sources, etc.
- mikeyouse 1y ago
  There’s standard maintenance as with anything mechanical but most importantly for energy - they don’t burn a fuel that is subject to supply/demand, international relations, or shortages. “Decades and decades” would satisfy your 20-yr scenario but more realistically, modern turbines from Vestas have 30-yr lifespans (which are often exceeded) and the newest gen GE turbines come with 40-yr lifespans. There are inherent issues with LCOE but it’s the ‘least bad’ metric we have to compare energy sources. As of 2022, it looked like this: https://www.powerengineeringint.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/BNEF.jpg https://www.powerengineeringint.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/... With onshore wind about $0.04/kwh and nuclear more like $0.22/kwh. Which sounds outlandish until you realize that PPAs for wind auctions are regularly under $0.03 now and Hinkley C is going to cost something like $50 billion for the two reactors and the rate guaranteed to the owners is north of $0.18 now which will return them something terrible like 7% IRR.

shadowgovt 1y ago

For what it's worth: one of the reasons Google has a datacenter in Iowa (of all places) is that there's a windfarm out there making up something like 60% of the local power generation. That makes the power super cheap (and with all the land they have, that windfarm can continue to scale). If Google's putting their money into it, I suspect there's more to the wind story than "wealth transfer from tax payers and consumers to the windmill people."

Cthulhu_ 1y ago
Same in the Netherlands; companies like Google, Microsoft etc invest in offshore power alongside the government and energy companies. Unfortunately this also means they "claim" a percentage of its capacity for newly built datacenters, meaning that it's not so much replacing non-renewable energy sources as adding to total production.

tovej 1y ago

Wind power is among the cheapest sources of electricity, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_sourc... Wind power also has the benefit that it keeps the carbon in the ground and isn't contributing to the massive climate crisis that humanity and the earth's ecosystems are facing. And there's no direct waste from energy production.

dralley 1y ago

They pay for themselves in a couple of years (even without subsidies) and tend to produce peak power during periods when solar is offline (e.g. at night or cloudy days). Farmers like them because they don't take up much space and they provide revenue independent of how well their crops do, which varies wildly year to year. It's cheaper than burning fossil fuels (though not quite as cheap as solar) Adding wind to the network does not make electricity prices go up (unless you do something stupid like shut down all your nuclear plants at the same time). That's nonsense. It's maybe not quite as cheap if you factor in the storage requirements to build up the grid "properly", but still cheaper than coal at the very least.

onetimeusename 1y ago
> They pay for themselves in a couple of years (even without subsidies) Do you have a source on this?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- worik 1y ago
  https://www.turbinehub.com/post/how-long-does-a-wind-farm-take-to-pay-for-itself-off https://www.turbinehub.com/post/how-long-does-a-wind-farm-ta...
  - dralley 1y ago
    It's also worth mentioning that, while I'm not anti-nuclear on principle, the economic return on nuclear projects ranges somewhere between "multiple decades" and "never" - and there's a large empty gap on the timescale of a decade between spending most of that money and starting to receive dividends. And you'd better be running it 100% At least with solar and wind the buildout takes a few weeks or months, and you can start collecting even with a partial buildout.
    - Gud 1y ago

thuridas 1y ago

Electricity prices go up? Are you blaming the windmills? It should you blame the new AI data centers And windmills are profitable by themselves. And reduces foreign imports with increasing taxes on this goods. If we removed all subsidies coal would be the real affected. I am not sure about property value but burning gas next to homes creating health problems to power Elon musk data centers surely doesn't help. The dark fumes from coal, gas or oil are going to affect it.

AftHurrahWinch 1y ago

As usual, the facts are in the linked report not in the journalist's summary. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nrMSJOxI6Iqw6HRKtnvWjOkj3tp_gCRE/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nrMSJOxI6Iqw6HRKtnvWjOkj3tp... It's more precise, avoiding that strange construction, "science-based". If I understand correctly, linguists call these productive analogies (?), where we start producing more of them by analogy to some root, so: Faith-based -> Community-based -> Evidence-based -> Plant-based -> Science-based Or some other hypothetical inheritance chain.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

cyberax 1y ago

> What exactly is a science-based climate goal? And why would wind energy be essential for it? Land-based wind power is OK-ish. It's susceptible to renewable droughts, but it's fine as long as it's just a part of the mix. But the offshore wind power is pretty much the _only_ reliable renewable, outside of classic hydro and exotics like tidal power or geothermal. Offshore wind generators are pretty much guaranteed to always produce at least _some_ power due to diurnal wind patterns.