WIND POWER: The world's winds contain more than enough energy to power human civilization.
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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
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Wind turbines on land and offshore could readily provide more than four times the power that the world as a whole currently uses. Throw in kites or robot aircraft generating electricity from sky-high winds and the world could physically extract roughly 100 times more power than presently employed—and the climatic consequences remain minimal.
Two new computer-model analyses suggest there are few limits to the wind's potential. Although "there are physical limits to the amount of power that can be harvested from winds, these limits are well above total global energy demand," explains climate-modeler Kate Marvel of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who led the analysis published September 9 in Nature Climate Change. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) Current global demand is roughly 18 terawatts. (A terawatt is one trillion watts.)
Given the desire to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electric generation, a growing number of wind farms are cropping up from the U.S. to China—more than 239 gigawatts worth of wind turbines have been installed globally. But the ultimate limits of wind power's potential contribution remained unclear. One complication, for example, is that any effort to harvest wind power ends up having an impact on the wind itself, reducing its speed—as well as influencing both local weather and global climate.
Using a global meteorological and sunlight-chemistry computer model paired with power generation information from turbine manufacturers, environmental scientists Cristina Archer of the University of Delaware and Mark Jacobson of Stanford University analyzed when wind turbines might reach a saturation point—the point at which the addition of more turbines would reduce the amount of power generated, rather than increase it. At 100 meters up—roughly the hub height of a modern large-scale wind turbine on land—that saturation point would allow more than 250 terawatts of power to be generated, according to the results published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on September 10. "We calculated how much electrical energy can be generated from the atmosphere," Archer explains, noting that four million turbines spread around the globe could easily and sustainably produce 7.5 terawatts of power, or nearly half of all power used today.
For their part, Marvel and her colleagues examined the geophysical limits of wind power, or how much energy can be extracted from global winds without major impacts. Surface winds below 395 meters, which ultimately dissipate anyway, could provide at least 400 terawatts of power, whereas those at higher altitudes could offer more than 1,800 terawatts based on atmospheric physics.
The researchers then used a computer model to simulate the global climate over a century to find out what impact such power extraction might have. If humans could figure out how to extract all that power, global temperatures could rise by as much as one degree Celsius and precipitation decreased by roughly 10 percent. Of course, that's more than 100 times more energy than presently consumed by the entirety of human civilization, suggesting that the actual impacts of wind power would be far smaller. "At the scale of civilization, the climate consequences of widely distributed wind turbines are negligible," says climate-modeler Ken Caldeira of Carnegie Institution's Department of Ecology at Stanford, a co-author with Marvel.
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41 Comments
Add CommentunScientific American again hypes wind power, but doesn't seem to like to run articles that show the realties on the topic. Wind power has potential, but it is by no means a reliable stand alone source for power.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf it were as reliable as advertised why doesn't every home in America outfitted with wind power? Answer-because it can not be demonstrated to be cost effective! Maintenance costs are high and reliability has been low. I hope those factors change. They usually do over time as technology matures.
"Yet the climate change debt of a wind turbine is smaller than that of other energy technologies that do not emit greenhouse gases, such as nuclear reactors. "It takes only a few months—less than nine—for a turbine to offset its greenhouse gas emissions" related to construction, Archer notes. "Good luck building anything else that can produce all that power with such small carbon emissions."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisArcher and Jacobsen are of course notorious Big Oil funded liars. Compared to nukes per kwh, wind uses 60 times the carbon intense steel and concrete as nukes and destroy 10000 times the forest and farm land carbon sink in mountain ridge sites, 5 times sized transmission, and road asphalt surfacing and clear cuts in construction. When the inefficient gas backup run inefficiently is added to the wind carbon equation it actually uses more gas and produces more GHG's than just building efficient gas plant in the first place.
Jacobsen's nuclear carbon sink lies center on his wacky contention that nuke power leads to nuke wars causing cities to burn every 30 years, and his claim that wind plant can be built faster than nukes - mostly because Big Oil owns the politicians I suppose. Lets see Cape Wind started 1992, still no construction. Vogtle construction this summer, service 2016. Gee who won that?
Unsubsidized wind cost fully loaded with gas backup and transmission costs over 30 cents a kwh and once Chinese dumping ends will continue its slow rise over the decade. First of a kind nukes built by primitive construction techniques in the west are costing less than 5 cents a kwh when built by public power twice the cost as building the save units in China now 90% complete using modern factory construction techniques.
The notoriously corrupt antinuclear Obama bought off by Big Oil has scarcely put a dime in Nextgen nuclear development, while the IFR reactor has been design ready to build since 1996 after testing from many years at INR. GE has an offer out - impossible in Obama's bureaucratically crippled USA to build this American designed reactor in England to burn their plutonium stock. It was the other Dem fathead - Big Oil's Bill Clinton - that shut down this project in 1996.
Now the Indians will have one in service next year, at a cost cheaper than new gas plant here.
according to Bloomberg, if the money spent on renewables in the US since 2004 had been spent on nuclear, the US would now be coal free saving the lives of tens of thousands of American's dying annual from coal air pollution.
Why isn't every home in America outfitted with coal power? Oil? Natural gas? Nuclear?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's a rare technology that finds its way into every home in America, or even gets close.
In the case of power generation, there are both efficiency and aesthetic reasons to centralize it. Even if a technology is developed to the point where it's long-run cost-competitive, the installation and occasional maintenance costs may make it impractical for home use. If a tech will generate $5000 worth of otherwise-free electricity a year and last ten years, but costs $25000 every ten years to install or replace, that would be very much cost-effective but still too expensive for most households to buy into.
In the Seventies, solar power was "plentiful".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDuring the Reagan Revolution, the stock market was never going to stop going up. In the Nineties, the internet was going to solve all problems.
You have to wonder how long it will take before the general tradition of hollow promises intended only to spur financial success for a few falling through will inspire so many to ignore them that even magazines will think twice before publishing them.
In the end, it was never even the illegitimacy of the claims that did them in. It was ignoring the fact that only the criminal corporate rich had complete control of each and used it solely for personal profit. Using it, like nuclear power, as a "bargaining chip" to get coal and oil to cobble back room deals in the perpetrators' favor. To say nothing of getting fat govenrment enfranchised contracts filled using substandard equipment and services. Solar power devices were never anywhere near as efficient as they could be. The producers had their own ugly little deals with the power companies to keep the general public from becoming too independent. And anyone who thinks the Reagan Revolution and all the subsequent bubbles didn't involve tidal waves of unethical if not criminal dealing is only walking around with a target on.
Wind power may be plentiful enough to answer present needs many times over, but if you think anything more than a fraction of the present need will ever be met, you may be as dim as the New World Order needs you to be. At the very least, oil and coal will make their own deals with turbine makers to shoot their product in the foot.
But, it still has to be pointed out that wind turbines remove energy from the wind, which literally means they remove wind. And wind distributes seeds, redeposits dust, equalized temperature. The turbines will wreak havoc on the environment. That can be used by conventional companies to destroy the industry, but they will wait until the damage is bad enough that it will be obvious enough to act.
If you want an alternative to conventional energy supplies, it is still possible for hand cranked rafts of heavy batteries to handle at least a significant load of everyday power needs.
I would say that is another Big Oil funded disinformation study using schlock analysis. A much more reputable analysis, by more competent researchers, using the correct top-down method of energy analysis shows maximum of 1 TW of available Wind Energy:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswww.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421511004836
In the end though, it is all silly talk, always hyped in the Big Oil bought-and-paid-for-media, but only for Renewables, Oil and Gas supply. NEVER for Coal or Nuclear: Thorium, Uranium or Fusion which is not only UNLIMITED but practical, economic and CONCENTRATED energy that can be harvested ANYWHERE!
The Solar Energy received by the Earth is 174,000 TW vs their fabricated 1,800 maximum TW of Wind. So according to their bizarre logic Solar Energy should be 97X more practical than Wind. Their idiotic rationale would suggest we abandon Wind in favor of Solar.
So the REAL TRUTH is neither Solar or Wind are practical energy sources, except for odd niche applications and it is flatly impossible to sustain a modern industrial civilization on Wind or Solar Energy. And the Catch-22 is you need a modern industrial civilization to have the infrastructure, resources and free capacity to build Wind & Solar industrial power plants.
So for real UNLIMITED energy supply consider that it takes <2 gms of thorium to supply an avg American households electricity supply for a year, burnt in a high burn reactor like a LFTR. An American could dig their lifetime's share of USA Energy Consumption with a shovel in one hour at an abandoned rare earth mine tailings dump, and that is concentrated, portable power - night/day, north/south, windy/calm, sunny/cloudy, arctic/desert, space or under or on the ocean power.
Don't get suckered into Big Oil's bait-and-switch Renewable Energy campaign, the #1 posterboy of that SCAM is Germany which just commissioned the 1st of 23 planned giant, 2200 MW Lignite Dirt-burners to supply its REAL power needs - "but they're solar & wind compatible". Plus imported Oil and NG & Nuclear Power both domestic & imported, - that is Germany's REAL energy supply.
Bottom line: you can't run a modern civilization on PIXIE POWER. Forget it. Nuclear, Coal, Oil, Gas with some conventional Hydro are the choices. But realize Oil, Gas & Hydro are not gonna do the job as economical high EROEI supplies dwindle and developing world demand skyrockets - so you are left with the real choice in future Energy resources - Coal or Nuclear. Pick one.
Nearly every house is connected to natural gas and in fact, power production would be more efficient at each location for residences. The reason is it doesnt take as much fuel to power a house on site as it does in some large central plant. The house does not need to generate the excess power needed to get through all of the transformers and power production can be tailored specifically to the use in the house, minimizing waste. As far as aesthetic appeal, no one can tell my house even has a natural gas generator and the solar panels in general do not look bad. I have 100% onsite power production, I have yet to draw off the grid more than I produce this year.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe mistake being made is the insistence that power production must be centralized. It is totally inefficient and wasteful. The best use of wind power is to use it to produce some sort of fuel, such as hydrogen, which can be transported to onsite power plants, which would be the most efficient way to use it such power. Both by reducing the amount of fuel needed for any given house and from the production side, a plane or other device need not be tethered to the ground for high altitude wind. Simply fly a the device up there, let it produce the fuel and then bring it back down. The same with using ocean currents and waves. Just produce a fuel to store the energy. In both the wind and ocean ideas, producing fuel, you can build fewer of these devices because they could be moved to locations with the best current or wind.
Well stated. Distributed generation is much more efficient. Also, natural gas powered onsite generators would be much less susceptible to storm outages, hurricanes etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWind power is an attractive but fatally flawed resource. Storage of electricity is it's Achilles heel, and people who think that the grid is some "battery bank" that they can make a deposit into and then draw out from don't have a clue how the grid works.
Just think about turning on and a bunch of high draw appliances in your house. The lights dim then recover. Imagine if thousands of people did the same thing at the same time. The grid would shut down. And that is the problem with wind power; it's constant off/on nature is a grid killer.
And let's not even mention condors or bats.
There is no way that home wind mills will generate $5K per year in electricity. It would be nice, but it won't happen in todays dollars.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe economies of scale that impact the size of other types of power plants do not apply the same way with wind power. Smaller wind mills are just as efficient.
Sure wind power can work. They just need to put up more. And higher. They can put them above the highest trees. They could put them in the windiest areas. New cities could be built around them. Maybe in the plains states. Just think how clean the air could be. Energy doesn't have to be dirty or toxic. Oh and I do believe every home will have their own wind turbine eventually. It will kick in when the wind blows and lower your monthly electrical bill. Or maybe get rid of your monthly electrical bill altogether.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow I know none of you, gas at home distributed generation types are deep thinkers, but let me try one more time to penetrate the thickness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven if you could get around the 20 cent a kwh cost of your home fuel cell, you still are dependent on the distinctly not distributed natural gas distribution network. You know - the one that kills scores of folks annually in explosions explosions.
DUH!!!
Conservative disinfo brigade ...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom a practical point of view I offer the following. I live near one of the "windiest" places in the country as determined by NOAA and many other reputable agencies. Several years back millions were invested in to what was guaranteed to be the most consistently producing wind farms on the planet. Make no mistake it does produce a lot of power but it has consistently failed to live up to the projections. Finally one of the lead engineers confessed "I guess it was not as windy as we thought". If this is what our best and brightest can give us, any theoretical calculations of the potential for wind power generation is simply blowing in the wind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNaked Science
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPrincipled action of inventions that will change the world and scientific article on how to create electricity: www.eco-energysource.com
Naked Science
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPrincipled action of inventions that will change the world and
scientific article on how to create electricity: www.eco-energysource.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot every home is suitable for wind or solar, only those unusually windy (or sunny) places.
The atmospheric jet streams (polar jets at 7–12 km, and the weaker subtropical jets at 10–16 km altitude – NOT at 2 km like the article said) are the true mother lode of wind power. Also, future wind turbines which won’t require braking when the going gets good (and the wind really whoops up) will help too. On land, the best locations are the crevasses in hill range crests.
Perhaps it could be gleaned from the article that both still have a long, long road. The wind and solar turbines that will really work will look like today’s like a BMW looks like a Model T.
One thing that could accelerate Wind and Solar development would be the myriad ‘cottage’ industries funding the vast systematic research it takes collectively - through Joint Industry Projects - to tackle the very hard job of making 'simple' work. Several related competitors fund research, the fruits of which are divided by pre-agreed zone.
Nuclear thorium (or fusion, of course, one day, but this will require a new generation of supermagnets ten times the strength of today's) should play a role.
Even better: Ultradeep Geothermal will work just anywhere, (at 1/3 the cost of a semisubmersible rig) and is exceptionally stable and easy to run - and geothermal provides the very best jobs.
And of course, best of all, there is Yellowstone, which is scheduled to erupt bringing an event analogous to a nuclear or impact winter. A group of really massive EGS units (EGS geothermal pumps water through permeable hot rock) could bring the double benefit of stabilizing it and providing infinite power forever. I would start by pumping in the cold water gently (at low pressure, to not open any new cracks). To preserve the park, the facilities could be built underground, with a nice lawn on top.
For those still finding reasons to shutdown the importance of renewable energy sources, consider your position of being deniers of any advancements made so far.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWould have anyone guessed your current astuteness and intellectual achievements while observing you when you were 4 years old?
Replacing any current energy generator with either solar or wind sources will cause some very noticeable changes in our landscape. Since the capacity factor for onshore wind farms is about 34% and since 1 GW of installed capacity of wind energy requires about 70 square miles of land, a 1000 MW wind farm would occupy about 280 square miles of land surface! For comparison Manhattan occupies about 34 square miles. This same energy source could be replaced by an advanced coal fired plant or nuclear plant that would occupy maybe ¼ of a square mile. The wind farm’s levelized capital cost would be about 3.7 times more than the coal plant and 2.7 times more than the nuclear source. Solar photovoltaic and solar thermal have their own very different concerns.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWrong again. I am not a republican and have both conservative and liberal positions on different issues. It depends upon the facts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree that the US should be using more nuclear power and I also think thorium has evry high potential. Our government needs to stop being the source of the administrative delays for the adoption of this technology.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI also agree that wind power will improve efficency over time, but it is not cost effective today in spite of what many readers here believe. It it was, people would be getting very wealthy installing the technology on homes in places like Texas
Achilles heel: It's often not windy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan't tell you how many times I've driven past wind turbines that aren't turning.
"Throw in kites or robot aircraft generating electricity from sky-high winds and the world could physically extract roughly 100 times more power than presently employed—and the climatic consequences remain minimal."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKites and robot aircraft.
Right.
The current cost of offshore wind power is double that of going rates.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow about working on the technology before soaking the consumer.
The land area comparison is a pernicious lie. Any photo of a midwestern wind farm clearly shows it shares land with agriculture, taking up perhaps 2% of the total area, while crops grow happily around it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMeanwhile, saying a coal plant occupies 1/4 mile ignores the land which needs to be mined to fuel it, and the area the coal ash takes up after you burn the coal. That deniers of renewable energy have to completely ignore reality shows a level of desperation.
Nonsense, there is long distance transmission lines, often cut through virgin forest, that must be kept cut, and access roads that must be big enough and clear enough to allow a massive, gargantuan crane to travel on, and no trespessing fenced in zones that block public access - for various reasons, including they don't want anyone to see all the dead birds, bats eagles that can be found. A grade school recently put up a Wind Turbine to showcase "how green we are" and had to tear it down when school kids were so traumatized by all the dead birds found on the ground every morning.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd you would have to be a blithering idiot to claim a massive 240 ft tall tower with 100 ft blades spinning at over a hundred miles per hour doesn't affect a large area of land around it. The noise, the ugliness, the hazard, all are an insult to the natural environment.
And to add insult to injury the Wind Energy is pretty much useless and DOES NOT reduce emissions, proven by several analysis - Texas, Colorado, Ireland and Holland. Germany & Denmark the World's biggest promoters of Wind have the two highest emissions per kwh of electricity generated in Europe. Expensive, environmentally destructive Wind Energy is a TOTAL WASTE OF MONEY. That is just the facts.
This article is pie-in-the-sky wind industry propaganda. INDUSTRIAL WIND TURBINES ARE A SHAM AND DO NOT PROVIDE CLEAN ENERGY! Not one coal or gas plant the world over has been decommissioned because of IWTs...and eliminating our dependence on fossil fuels is their whole purpose. To quote an expert: "Because wind blows intermittently, electric utilities must either keep their conventional power plants running all the time to make sure the lights don't go dark, or continually ramp up and down the output from conventional coal-or gas-fired generators (called "cycling"). But coal-fired and gas-fired generators are designed to run continuously, and if they don't, fuel consumption and emissions generally increase." In other words, fossil fuel plants act very much like your car's engine in city vs. highway traffic. This is happening worldwide, and in places like Colorado and Texas where CO2 and power plant pollution have increased since installing wind farms:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.forbes.com/2011/07/19/wind-energy-carbon.htmlhttp://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_15081808
http://www.clepair.net/IerlandUdo.html
http://www.thespec.com/news/ontario/article/610422--cost-of-green-energy-40-higher-than-government-estimates
The wind industry is built on crony capitalism, it is the only way it can exist. Taxpayer money builds them and power companies are mandated to buy wind generated power at much higher rates than conventionally produced power. There is no true benefit, except to wind power companies, politicians and lobbyists. Get ready to pay a lot more on your electric bills if offshore wind proliferates.
How does this study gel with that of Kleidon, reported in New Scientist, http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028063.300-wind-and-wave-farms-could-affect-earths-energy-balance.html?full=true&print=true , which claims that humans use 47 TW of energy and that wind can only provide 70 TW and even that would not be devoid of serious impacts?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere is an interesting question: what happens to global climate when you take energy from the wind and transfer it into making electricity. The wind, for the most part, is generated due to pressure differences that are driven by differential heating of the surface (resulting in weather) and the Earth's rotation. If we were to use part of the energy that was being dissipated by the wind to make electricity we would be causing a change to the flow of energy within the climate system. Simply put the wind is a gradient and if you change that gradient by removing energy then there are likely to be repercussions in the overall system.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSimply put: there is no such thing as a free lunch (or source of energy) so let us first think about what we are doing and then do it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGermany and wind energy – this can serve to-day as a negative example for green energy.
It all started with a great green idea – the wind and the sun don’t send you a bill.
Unfortunately – all kwh from wind and the sun are burdened with the feed-in tariff , so - in the meantime Germany has the second highest electricity rates in the EU – only Danmark with its still more excessive windmill installations has higher rates.
But this is just the start of the cost story :
As large industrial electricity consumers (an example is the chemical industry) are not willing to pay for the kwh containing the high feed-in tariffs of wind or solar elecricity , they got an exemption. The result is, that this exemption is now payed also by the ‘normal’ customer..
Then as Germany as such is not a favourable country for wind (neither for solar !) – the idea was to set up large windparks in the north sea and baltic sea.
But this turned out to become a financial nightmare, as the tech and logistic hurdles are much bigger than originally thought.. So, the feed-in tariff for offshore windmills had to be raised from the 9 ct (Euro)per kwh on land to 15 ct per kwh.
But this does not cover the transfer of the generated kwh from the offshore windpark to the grid on land. Due to the high costs of these transfer stations the absurd situation arises now, that a windpark stands there ‘ready-to-go’ but the kwh cannot be transferred to the North German grid, because the electricity company responsible for this does not have the money for this investment..
So the windpark investors raised hell and confronted the electricity company with liability suits.
Well – the solution was (by the German government) that the electricity bill to the ‘normal’ customer will include a fee covering such liability costs.
The next still unsolved problem is – the major part of the generated windmill kwh are generated in the northern part of Germany but the main industrial centers depending on these kwh are in the west and in the south of Germany.
This will result in a massive extension of the German grid (about 4000 km) – which is just going through its intial what I call planning ‘labor pains.´ Costs anything like 60 Billion Euros or higher. These costs are also payed by the ‘normal’ user via its electricity bill.
.... to be continued .....
...... continued ....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow – unfortunately the wind is not always blowing. So – even the greenies have to admit, that – as no economically viable solution to the electricity storage problem exists – we need so-called ‘capacity’ power stations, which are on standby waiting to get started when the windmills are on ‘stand-by’.
Normally – power stations get their revenue by generating and selling their kwh.
But this business model does not work for these ‘capacity’ power stations, because their mode of operation is completely dependent on the operation of the windmills. No investor would sink one penny into this.
So the government here had a new idea : Why not subsidize these ‘capacity’ power stations depending on the amount of power (Megawatt) they offer.. Another cost item which we will later find on our electricity bill.
For the time being – as gas power stations are too expensive (we don’t have here the cheap shale gas like you in the US, but we depend on the Russian Gasprom extorting as much money as they can) we are now starting lignite power stations (as dwbd said) , because lignite is the cheapest enery source here (about 2,5 ct per kwh).
This runs, of course, counter to the former German commitment to reduce the CO2 emissions.
On the other hand – our exceptionally safe nuclear power stations generating CO2-free kwh are stopped !
What I want to say is this : The initial great idea, that the wind is not sending a bill is now becoming a nightmare of ever increasing costs.
Apart from this cost story there are other problems like an inordinate amount of material (concrete, steel, copper, rare earth metals) for these windmill monsters with their rather meager power output.
Design the wind turbine to look like a funnel with scoops all around the outside skin. This would funnel the wind upward thru the narrow neck running the turbine blades. This design would protect the birds and bats from the blades or the cavitation behind the blades. The upward thrust of the air would send the air into the upper cooler air where the moisture would cause rain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSisko: I assume that you meant to ask why don't home come equipped with wind power, as if that proves your point. Well, homes don't come equipped with curtains. That doesn't mean that they aren't effective. Just because you declare wind unreliable doesn't make it so.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDwbd,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe impact of transmission lines will occur regardless of the source of the power (but is quite small, comparatively). Coal generated electricity will the use the very same lines.
A massive 240 ft tall tower with 100 ft blades spinning at over a hundred miles per hour obviously will affect the area around it. For instance, you don’t want to camp under one (or build a house underneath) because those blade snap off every once in a while. They coexist without problem with crops, though.
What they do NOT do is affect the whole entire planet with their gaseous chemical pollution, such as fossil fuels, or their ultra-poisonous residue such as uranium. Thorium is safer and more abundant than uranium. The reason nations keep uranium plants is to stockpile plutonium. A thorium mini-plant is not small enough to run your car, but it’s the size of a house (not a building) and services a town.
Perhaps you could direct us, such as by link, to these studies showing wind energy does not reduce emissions made in Texas, Colorado, Ireland and Holland. Germany & Denmark.
Billslycat,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article is quite imprecise, that much is true. The 1800 TW of power exist in jets about 10 km high over Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia and Russia.
Surface wind power does allow us, not to decommission plants entirely, but to reduce considerably the use of other fuels; it allows coal plants to run less, and that already makes a difference. And it was made to complement a portfolio that includes other soft green sources such as solar and sea; it ‘costing 40% higher than estimates’ is meaningless.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWind Critics,
Wind turbines will certainly evolve to become bird-friendly and more efficient, provided serious research is done.
One will straight facedly squander $3.2 to 4 trillion (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War#cite_note-1) to butcher 116,146 civilians (iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/2011/) of which I don’t want to think about how many were children - on a fake charge (Saddam’s WMD)!
But one can’t keep honest families in their homes because protecting worthless rich criminals is more important (not to mention paying for a war machine the size of the Cold War’s as if the Soviet Union or any other enemy superpower was out there. And there isn't).
So certainly it would be out of the question to refrain from leaving the burden of developing sustainable technology for everybody else, such as Europe and their half useless North and Baltic seas.
Wind must complement solar and geothermal. The US is the second most blessed country in the world in geothermal. And it provides the best jobs because of its stability and simplicity.
"..impact of transmission..regardless of the source of the power..quite small.."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNope, Nuclear, NG & Coal power plants can and are located close to the source of demand. Wind must be located in rural areas where Wind resources are good and land has low value. And Wind with a low capacity factor means transmission lines must be at least triple over-sized to carry peak output, whereas on avg they only supply 15-30% of peak. And transmission line area is the bulk of Wind Farm land utilization.
"..nations keep uranium plants is to stockpile plutonium.."
Nations AREN'T stockpiling plutonium. It is being burned as a MOX fuel. Uranium is generally easier to use as fuel in NPP's than thorium, and indeed originally Nuclear was developed for Weapons for which Uranium -> Plutonium-239 was required.
Wind Energy DOES NOT reduce fossil fuel consumption:
Holland:
clepair.net/windSchiphol.html
Ireland:
clepair.net/IerlandUdo.html
Colorado & Texas:
wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/BENTEK-How-Less-Became-More.pdf
Australia analysis:
bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/peter-lang-wind-power.pdf
"..reduce considerably the use of other fuels; it allows coal plants to run less.."
Yep, but you still need to pay for the Coal or NG power plants PLUS the Wind Farms, including maintenance & operations on all of them. Needless & expensive duplication of supply. And Coal or NG shadowing Wind energy run less efficiently, along with transmission & economics of capital issues means Wind does not reduce emissions or fossil fuel significantly if at all as shown in above links.
"..costing 40% higher.. is meaningless.."
Actually Wind capital cost is 2-3X that of Coal or Nuclear & 4-5X greater NG, including NG infrastructure. And you still need the Coal & NG along with the Wind. Wind is outrageously expensive for an energy source that effectively destroys our most economical sources of power: baseload Nuclear, Coal & Hydro. Wind energy is a total waste of money.
Yep the Iraq & Afghanistan Oil & Gas wars blew upwards of $4 trillion - a massive subsidy for Oil & Gas. Big Oil/NG is the #1 promoter of Wind Energy since it destroys baseload Nuclear/Coal/Hydro and converts it into a new form of peaking power production a role served by NG. And it forces up Electricity prices so it is more expensive to replace Oil & Gas with Electricity (i.e. Electric vehicles). 80-90% of the primary energy of the Wind/NG power source is NG not Wind. For the $4T we could easily have replaced all USA Electricity Generation with zero-emissions Nuclear.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, real arguments! Much better, now!
I would still prefer if the quoted sources were not personal blogs, in which anything can be published, but reliable institutional websites or journals.
Specifically, Kees le Pair’s work was rebuked as flimsy by several sources as discussed in the balanced article http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/jan/09/wind-turbines-increasing-carbon-emissions.
I believe the main point here is that wind is to be used in a portfolio that includes other ‘soft’ green sources such as sun and sea, and ‘hard’ green sources such as geothermal (ultra-deep geothermal, still not used, will work just anywhere) and perhaps ‘semi-green’ thorium (which can be placed anywhere, uses smaller reactors, and is safer and much more abundant than uranium. And yes, plutonium is being burnt now in England because so much of it has been stockpiled in the XX century).
Transmission lines will be more of a nuisance than if we switched to distributed onsite generation, true, but then again you can’t have everything, and at least the planet isn’t being destabilized (thawing arctic methane emissions - from peat permafrost on land, and much more from shallow seafloor clathrates - have already doubled GHG emissions and may well cause a climatic shift to a World Tropic with far higher sea levels) and you won’t run out of the fuel one fine day.
For the US, geothermal would be ideal, see the MIT’s excellent work on this at http://www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/pdfs/future_geo_energy.pdf
Renewables will take a lot of research to develop properly, and are mostly a cash sink today, agreed (as is space exploration, for instance), but it’s a long-term investment - and if one day we can get all our power from nondepleteable sources, our future will be that much safer and more stable.
The amount of energy required to build the wind farm has not been addressed. Heavy duty entry roads would require removal of soils and subsoils, and replacement of those with crushed stone to a depth required by engineers to be able to get heavy equipment to each and every mill site. This will need hundreds of truck hours just to move the soil out and the stone in. Each mill will need a base of maybe 250 cubic yards of concrete to support the wind tower, again requiring immense energy to manufacture the cement and mix the same. 25 to 30 trips to each mill site by concrete trucks can complete that part of the job. $6 million per mill to set one up for 1.5 MW installed and all you get out of the thing is about 34% of the nameplate or about 500 kW. Beside the eyesore and the flicker if you live among them, who would be able to afford that high priced energy?? Wind energy is not only not economically feasible, it's an eyesore and uses tremendous amounts of energy for its construction. Any investor who buys into one of these wind farms after the tax credits have been pulled off will not long keep his money there.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe amount of energy required to build the wind farm has not been addressed. Heavy duty entry roads would require removal of soils and subsoils, and replacement of those with crushed stone to a depth required by engineers to be able to get heavy equipment to each and every mill site. This will need hundreds of truck hours just to move the soil out and the stone in. Each mill will need a base of maybe 250 cubic yards of concrete to support the wind tower, again requiring immense energy to manufacture the cement and mix the same. 25 to 30 trips to each mill site by concrete trucks can complete that part of the job. $6 million per mill to set one up for 1.5 MW installed and all you get out of the thing is about 34% of the nameplate or about 500 kW. Beside the eyesore and the flicker if you live among them, who would be able to afford that high priced energy?? Wind energy is not only not economically feasible, it's an eyesore and uses tremendous amounts of energy for its construction. Any investor who buys into one of these wind farms after the tax credits have been pulled off will not long keep his money there.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have a quick question maybe someone here can answer. So everybody says that storing electrical power is the downfall of renewable energy. But wind energy comes in as kinetic energy and as we all know that is easily converted into potential energy and then back again- so why couldn't the energy be stored mechanically? I am imagining a system in which wind turbines are geared down to hoist one or a series of giant weights, probably they would have to be enormous, or a lot of them, which in turn are geared up to power generators constantly as they fall. Perhaps there would have to be an inconceivable amount of weight or great heights? But what about springs? Or how about compressed air? Or something else? These all would seem simple, well understood and therefore easily optimized and maintainable solutions... Can anyone show me with the numbers why thats not a conceivable solution to power storage on a medium to large scale? still not cheap but...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou mean flywheels. Yup, they're part of the solution, right you are!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou mean flywheels. Yup, they're part of the solution, right you are! Actually, they're more efficient than bateries.
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