Unsustainable: 43 Million Tonnes Of
Wind Turbine Blade Waste By 2050
“If the industry cannot come up with more sustainable manufacturing and disposal processes, public acceptance of wind energy would decline if the public becomes aware of these issues” – Ramirez-Tejeda et al., 2017
Despite an explosion in installed wind capacity since 1990, wind power had achieved just 0.39% of the world’s total energy consumption as of 2013.
Image Source
Germany has assumed a leading role in promoting the consumption of renewable energy. And yet even in Germany the share of energy consumption from wind power reached only 2.1% in 2016.
Despite its extremely limited infiltration as a world energy source, it is assumed that a rapid expansion of wind power will ultimately be environmentally advantageous both due to its reputation as a “clean” energy and because of the potential to contribute to reduced CO2 emissions.
Recently, however, the austere environmental impacts and health risks associated with expanding wind energy have received more attention.
For example, scientists have asserted that wind turbines are now the leading cause of multiple mortality events in bats, with 3 to 5 million bats killed by wind turbines every year. Migratory bats in North America may face the risk of extinction in the next few decades due to wind turbine-related fatalities.
Frick et al., 2017
“Large numbers of migratory bats are killed every year at wind energy facilities. … Using expert elicitation and population projection models, we show that mortality from wind turbines may drastically reduce population size and increase the risk of extinction. For example, the hoary bat population could decline by as much as 90% in the next 50 years if the initial population size is near 2.5 million bats and annual population growth rate is similar to rates estimated for other bat species (λ = 1.01). Our results suggest that wind energy development may pose a substantial threat to migratory bats in North America.”
Wind Turbine Blades Last 20 Years…And Then They Are Tossed Into Landfills
Besides reducing wildlife populations, perhaps one of the most underrated negative side effects of building wind turbines is that they don’t last very long (less than 20 years) before they need to be replaced. And their blades aren’t recyclable. Consequently, 43 million tonnes (47 million tons) of blade waste will be added to the world’s landfills within the next few decades.
Liu and Barlow, 2017
“The blades, one of the most important components in the wind turbines, made with composite, are currently regarded as unrecyclable. With the first wave of early commercial wind turbine installations now approaching their end of life, the problem of blade disposal is just beginning to emerge as a significant factor for the future. … The research indicates that there will be 43 million tonnes of blade waste worldwide by 2050 with China possessing 40% of the waste, Europe 25%, the United States 16% and the rest of the world 19%.”
“Although wind energy is often claimed to provide clean renewable energy without any emissions during operation (U.S. Department of Energy, 2015), a detailed ecological study may indicate otherwise even for this stage. The manufacture stage is energy-intensive and is associated with a range of chemical usage (Song et al., 2009). Disposal at end-of-life must also be considered (Ortegon et al., 2012; Pickering, 2013; Job, 2014).A typical wind turbine (WT) has a foundation, a tower, a nacelle and three blades. The foundation is made from concrete; the tower is made from steel or concrete; the nacelle is made mainly from steel and copper; the blades are made from composite materials (Vestas, 2006; Tremeac and Meunier, 2009; Guezuraga et al., 2012). Considering these materials only, concrete and composites are the most environmentally problematic at end-of-life, since there are currently no established industrial recycling routes for them (Pimenta and Pinho, 2011; Job, 2013).”
In a new paper entitled “Unsustainable Wind Turbine Blade Disposal Practices in the United States“, Ramirez-Tejeda et al. (2017) further detail the imminent and unresolved nightmare of wind turbine blade disposal. The environmental consequences and health risks are so adverse that the authors warn that if the public learns of this rapidly burgeoning problem, they may be less inclined to favor wind power expansion. Advocates of wind power are said to be “largely ignoring the issue”. It’s an “issue” that will not be going away any time soon.
In light of its minuscule share of worldwide consumption (despite explosive expansion in recent decades), perhaps it is time to at least reconsider both the benefits and the costs of wind energy expansion.
‘Adverse Environmental Consequences’ For A Rapidly Expanding Wind Power Grid
Ramirez-Tejeda et al. (2017)
“Globally, more than seventy thousand wind turbine blades were deployed in 2012 and there were 433 gigawatts (GW) of wind installed capacity worldwide at the end of 2015. Moreover, the United States’ installed wind power capacity will need to increase from 74 GW to 300 GW3 to achieve its 20% wind production goal by 2030. To meet the increasing demand, not only are more blades being manufactured, but also blades of up to 100 meters long are being designed and produced.”
“The wind turbine blades are designed to have a lifespan of about twenty years, after which they would have to be dismantled due to physical degradation or damage beyond repair. Furthermore, constant development of more efficient blades with higher power generation capacity is resulting in blade replacement well before the twenty-year life span.”
“Estimations have suggested that between 330,000 tons/year by 2028 and 418,000 tons/year by 2040 of composite material from blades will need to be disposed worldwide. That would be equivalent to the amount of plastics waste generated by four million people in the United States in 2013. This anticipated increase in blade manufacturing and disposal will likely lead to adverse environmental consequences, as well as potential occupational exposures, especially because available technologies and key economic constraints result in undesirable disposal methods as the only feasible options.”
Problems With Landfills
“Despite its negative consequences, landfilling has so far been the most commonly utilized wind turbine blade disposal method. … Landfilling is especially problematic because its high resistance to heat, sunlight, and moisture means that it will take hundreds of years to degrade in a landfill environment. The wood and other organic material present in the blades would also end up in landfills, potentially releasing methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and other volatile organic compounds to the environment.”
“The estimated cost to put blade material in landfills, not including pretreatment and transportation costs, is approximately US $60 per ton. [A typical blade may weigh 30-40 tons]. In the United Kingdom, where landfilling organics is not yet prohibited, the active waste disposal cost (which includes plastics) is approximately US $130 per ton.”
Problems With Incineration
“Incineration of blades is another disposal method with potential for energy and/or material recovery. … Combustion of GFRP is especially problematic because it can produce toxic gases, smoke, and soot that can harm the environment and humans. Carbon monoxide and formaldehyde have been reported as residue from thermal degradation of epoxy resin. Another residue is carbon dioxide, which poses concerns regarding greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, about 60% of the scrap remains as pollutant ash after the incineration process, some of which is sent to landfills, potentially contaminating the sites. Possible emission of hazardous flue gasses is also among the issues with incinerating wind turbine blades.”
“One key issue is that all these thermal processing techniques for wind turbine blades would also require fragmentation of the material into smaller pieces through mechanical processing before being fed into the reactors, increasing energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.”
Problems With Mechanical Processing
“Mechanical processing is a relatively simpler disposal method that consists of cutting, shredding, and grinding the material to separate the fibers from resins, so it can be repurposed. This process is energy intensive and produces small fiber particles with poor mechanical properties that can only be used as filler reinforcement material in the cement or asphalt industries. … The dust emitted in the grinding process of FRP creates occupational health and safety risks for workers. Inhalation, as well as skin and eye contact can produce moderate irritation to mucous membranes, skin, eyes, and coughing. Occupational exposure and prolonged inhalation of such particles have been found to produce alterations of the cellular and enzymatic components of the deep lung in humans, identified as acute alveolitis.”
Problems With Chemical Degradation
“The last method is chemical degradation, which consists of first mechanically reducing the size of the blades, then degrading them using a chemical solution. … Although no industrial-level chemical recycling of thermoset polymers has been done yet, some hazardous chemicals such as nitric acids and paraformaldehyde have been used in testing and development processes. Occupational exposure to these chemicals can produce harmful respiratory diseases including potential nasal cancer, and dermal health effects.”
Advocates Of Wind Power ‘Have Largely Ignored The Issue’
“Few individuals and organizations recognize the problems inherently related to blade recyclability. This situation creates an obstacle for promoting policy interventions to solve these problems. As a result, manufacturers, wind farm operators, and advocates have largely ignored the issue, focusing efforts on promoting wind energy and addressing other issues such as negative impacts on wildlife and noise generation.”
“If the industry cannot come up with more sustainable manufacturing and disposal processes, public acceptance of wind energy would decline if the public becomes aware of these issues, inhibiting its growth as one of the main sources of electricity generation in the United States.”
‘advocates have largely ignored the issue, focusing efforts on promoting wind energy and addressing other issues such as negative impacts on wildlife and noise generation.”’
Actually they have not only ignored wildlife and noise issues, they actively work to demonize any effort to bring such things to the public’s notice.
As sod will be along to explain shortly.
1) Bats: proposals exist to turn off wind turbines in regions with bats at night and low winds. That would reduce their output, but not by much, and would save most bats. Don’t know if that is implemented already.
2)
1 GWh of renewable energy replaces roughly 3 GWh of fossil fuel energy, thus renewables are under-represented when looking at primary energy consumption. If we could switch to 100% renewables tomorrow the primary energy consumption would be less than half of what it is today, but end energy usage would not change. Growth of renewables is still exponential (https://www.carbonbrief.org/in-depth-new-bp-data-shows-emissions-flat-2016-record-rise-renewables “At recent rates of growth of 16% per year, these renewable sources would outpace the current output from nuclear by 2019, hydro by 2022 and gas by 2030.”)
3) Recycling the blades seems to be a problem, I agree. The rest of the structure of a windmill has a recycling rate of 80-90% according the company websites in Germany. This survey (https://www.ict.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ict/de/documents/ue_klw_Poster_Recycling%20von%20Windkraftanlagen.pdf) got as result that around 20-30 kT of rotor blase waste will accrue in the 2040s and 30-40 kT in the 2050s (in Germany). Plastic waste in Germany was 5,877 kT in 2015 (https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/daten/abfall-kreislaufwirtschaft/entsorgung-verwertung-ausgewaehlter-abfallarten/kunststoffabfaelle#textpart-1) … so rotor blades would be around 0.5-0.6% of our waste. Just to get a perspective of the “environmental nightmare”.
SebastianH: I love it when someone wants 100% renewables. 😀
100% is only achievable every so often. Most of the time the percentage will be average to low and from time to time it will be so low that the whole electricity system is down.
The islands of Tasmania and El Hierro tried to power their economies with 100 percent green energy, but both islands eventually went back to diesel generators after suffering reliability problems.
South Australia has a high percentage (1.56GW) installed and right now (22:30) it produces only 17%, which covers only 15% of the demand. Just read http://joannenova.com.au/ to see how South Australia is doing.
Ireland, is quite similar. 15% of the installed capacity and 14% of the demand.
Denmark looks a bit better, as solar provides 9% of the demand. The wind is worse than Ireland, as it is 10% of the installed capacity and 9% of the demand.
In all three cases the installed wind capacity is right now about the demand. However, to cover a time like this you would need to increase the installed capacity about 10 times.
Ireland had between the 18th of June and the 19th of June for about 25 hours just about 2% of the installed wind capacity.
The data is from: https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=true&solar=true&page=country&countryCode=IE
Solar and wind are volatile and it doesn’t matter how much you install. I’m not talking about the sun, as this is quite obvious. The wind is very volatile.
If the world wants to reduce the CO2 concentration through the production and installation of more and more solar, wind and batteries, it will increase the CO2 concentration straight away quite substantial.
Tesla car battery example: “For every kilowatt hour of storage capacity in the battery generated emissions of 150 to 200 kilos of carbon dioxide already in the factory.”
Juergen, I love it when people on the internet manage to completely ignore what the post or the comment they reply to was about and just write whatever they had in mind 😉
But I’ll bite. My mention of 100% renewables referred to every kWh consumed coming from renewable energy sources. Not building 100% the necessary capacity and the discovering that wind and solar have a small capacity factor 😉 It was a hypthetical statement to make the author of the post aware that renewables are under represented in primary energy consumption, because their output more or less matches the input. Fossil fuel has varying efficiency, e.g. 1 kWh of gasoline will move your car the same distance as around 0.2-0.3 kWh of electricity moves an electric vehicle. 1 kWh of coal will produce around 0.4 kWh of electricity and so on. Strangely enough even nuclear electricity generation has a 3:1 factor attached to it … so 1 kWh of nuclear electricity equals 3 kWh of primary energy consumption while 1 kWh of wind electricity equals just 1 kWh of primary energy consumption.
Got it?
On the topic of 100% renewables … that’s certainly possible but it’s not entirely clear at what cost. 70% should be achievable without the need for large storage solutions. Fairly small batteries to stabilize the gird and natural gas as backup for the remaining 30% should work just fine. At least in Germany.
Seb FANTASY LAND yet again !!
Tell us seb.. how close is the closest big wind turbine to you in your inner city ghetto.
When you are able to feel wind turbines from your basement window, I will believe you are capable of doing anything but ranting aimlessly.
“My mention of 100% renewables referred to every kWh consumed coming from renewable energy sources”
I guess this means that the consumption has to be aligned to the production.
This is what Prof. Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker (Co-President of the Club of Rome) mentioned last year in an interview when he said that factory’s are batteries too. They will be turned off when there is no renewable energy and turned on when the energy is back.
This means the same what you said. The consumption will be 100% the renewable energy sources and while the energy from the renewable energy sources is variable, the consumption has to be too.
This is the real reason of the renewable energy supporters: Reduce the consumption!
The only question is to what level?
No … the final energy consumption is of course the same.
No … I have made no statement as to how 100% renewables would be achieved. I just used 100% to illustrate the difference in primary energy consumption when 100% of all usage would be renewable vs. 0% … primary energy consumption would decrease by a factor of 2-3 without the final energy usage changing.
“…proposals exist to turn off wind turbines in regions with bats at night…”
Here’s the species distribution of just ONE of the many there are in Europe.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/230713082_fig4_Figure-1-The-European-distribution-of-Daubenton's-bat-Myotis-daubentonii-The-closed
Good luck with that.
“1 GWh of renewable energy replaces roughly 3 GWh of fossil fuel energy,…”
Only if consumers are forced to cut consumption by 2/3, …unless you’ve figured out how to violate energy conservation. (I wouldn’t put it past some of them to claim that.)
See reply to Juergen above. 1 kWh of wind power equals 1 kWh of primary energy consumption while 1 kWh of electricity generated by a fossil fuel power plant equals around 3 kWh of primary energy consumption. Even nuclear gets that 1:3 conversion. That’s what I meant. No energy conservation problem here … just a definition problem which results in renewables being under-represented in primary energy consumption statistics.
No, just another seb misinformation strawman.
Coal doesn’t become energy until it is used in a power station
If you want to compare that, then you have to look at want percentage of the wind, wind power uses…
Seeing as MOST energy in the cylinder of wind passing through a wind turbine goes straight through, your methodology is, AS ALWAYS, totally flawed. (what percentage of the whole circle do the blades take up, seb 😉
Try another baseless analogy, seb..
That will work 😉
Oh, you got to that before I could. =)
There is something called the Betz Limit “no wind turbine can convert more than 16/27 (59.3%) of the kinetic energy of the wind into mechanical energy turning a rotor”.
If it would use 100% then there would a vacuum bind the blades and then the air behind it would be sucked in causing most likely the interference with the blades. Would the blades even be forced the other direction?
Anyway, “the real world limit is well below the Betz Limit with values of 0.35-0.45 common even in the best designed wind turbines.”
“Limit with values of 0.35-0.45 common even in the best designed wind turbines.””
The newest coal fired power station in Japan can extract some 55% of the coal’s energy.
Oh dear, seems seb has been caught out by FACTS..
… yet again !!!
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=difference+between+primary+energy+and+final+energy
Educate yourself instead of ranting baseless nonsense…
I, too, would like to see SebastianH support this claim with peer-reviewed scientific data. More than likely he got it from a blog or an alarmist source.
Because of their unreliability, analysts have found that adding more solar and wind power increases dependence on fossil fuels, and doubles CO2 emissions.
https://notrickszone.com/2016/11/24/analysis-adding-more-solar-wind-power-increases-dependence-on-fossil-fuels-doubles-co2-emissions/
I think that Sebastian is mostly right.
This page does a very conservative estimate of how petrol and electric cars compare.
https://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/wells-to-wheels-electric-car-efficiency/
basically if you use the petrol to generate electricity and then use the electricity to run a car, you get DOUBLE the distance. so when renewables start to drive cars, we will see a huge drop of energy used to run cars.
that is the reason, why comparison of wind power to total energy use does not make any sense. it is alternative facts…
E = M•C••ESCHER?
What do electric vs gas cars have to do with it? We’re talking about electricity coming into your home. And the only difference between fossil fuel and (un)renewable generation is the elevated cost and unreliability of the latter.
As usual you do your best to try to confuse the issue.
Got that EV yet, sob? (or still just the shill, yapping?)
Seb is still driving his Mercedes.
Diesel is it, seb ??
————————–
And yonason, the only person sob is confusing, is himself.
AndyG55 is back, hurray 😉
Great response, seb
Seems you are just as EMPTY as always.
How is the Mercededs going, seb?
is it diesel or petrol?
Got your EV order in yet ??
“I think that Sebastian is mostly right.”
Which almost certainly makes seb almost completely WRONG.
Nothing unusual happening there. !
I assumed Sebastian was talking about electricity (when the post is actually about total energy). If you burn enough coal to generate 1GWh of electricity, you will have burnt your way through roughly 3GWh worth of fuel. (BP assume 2.6GWh actually). The extra goes up the chimney and out of the cooling towers. So in this sense you can say that the electricity from a wind turbine has replaced 3X the primary energy from coal – you end up with 1GWh of electricity either way.
Here’s the source, where they work out that every joule of electrical energy from renewables (and hydro/nuclear) is worth 2.6 times that in primary energy – BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2017:
“The primary energy values of nuclear and hydroelectric power generation, as well as electricity from renewable sources, have been derived by calculating the equivalent amount of fossil fuel required to generate the same volume of electricity in a thermal power station, assuming a conversion efficiency of 38% (the average for OECD thermal power generation).”
But gas is better – maybe 50% efficiency from a CCGT, so you only burn 2GWh worth of gas to get to 1GWh of electricity.
And if you are able to burn the gas directly in your home, you maybe get to 80% for heating. And, if I recall, it’s about half the energy losses to pipe gas to a home than it is to get electricity there over the grid.
So – no, 1GWh of electricity from a wind turbine is not worth more than 2GWh of gas, and probably a lot less.
ENRON Accounting.
Is that how they justify charging Germans 3x what Americans pay, because a ” clean renewable” KWh of their electricity is worth 3 of our “dirty” ones?
One ought to factor in the energy required to produce wind turbines and solar panels.
I am interested to know how much of their life time is consumed before there is something on the plus side of the ledger for these things.
Stuart got it right. That is what I meant.
On his final point, that other waste is so much greater – perhaps the Danes will find solace in that?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/co2insanity.com/2011/06/12/broken-wind-turbine-blades-create-mountainous-waste-problem/amp/
…or not.
Kenneth,
See what you did there? For you everything a non-skeptic writes is per se wrong. Just simply using your brain and some common knowledge would have helped you here. See Stuart’s reply … he got it right.
That’s just something you made up. In your linked article you write about coal: “the highest in the EU” which is definetly not the case (just look at Poland). You write “The natural consequence is that Germany’s CO2 emissions have not declined since 2009” … which is true, but the CO2 emissions per produced kWh has reduced a lot, so it is not telling the whole story.
You also write “the dramatic increase in renewables has not come close to offsetting the greater CO2 emissions generated from the renewed German emphasis on coal.” which is just wrong. There is new renewed emphasis on coal. Go to https://energy-charts.de/energy.htm select year = all, annual and all sources. Then deselect all everything but brown coal and hard coal. Do you see an increase in coal usage since 2002? I don’t. Then select just uranium, wind and solar. Is wind and solar more than compensating the reduced nuclear output? Definetly. So what are you talking about there?
Your article is prime example of disinformation practices. And now you repeat those soundbites “doubles CO2 emissions” and “increases dependence on fossil fuels” as if that would be the case everywhere. It is the case in Ontario Kanada. There is no possible way renewables would increase CO2 emissions if their percentage on power generation would increase from let’s say 10% to 50% and fossil fuel gets replaced. How could that ever happen? Even if all those fossil fuel power plant would run in idle mode to be able to jump in any time the fuel consumption would be far less than before.
No, I didn’t write that. You just made that thought up and attributed it to me, which is what you do on a routine basis (make false statements).
Because you have such a long track record of dishonesty, making up stuff, claiming that your beliefs are “basic physics”….I will assume that when you make a claim that seems dubious, it probably is. You’ve long violated the basic rules of honest dealing for me to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Speaking of dishonesty, Stuart didn’t agree with your numbers, SebastianH. He wrote:
“So – no, 1GWh of electricity from a wind turbine is not worth more than 2GWh of gas, and probably a lot less.”
Stuart contradicted you, SebastianH, and yet you are here dishonestly claiming that he is “right”. Which I guess means that he is right that you and your numbers are wrong. You can’t even tell the truth when relaying what someone who you think agrees with you said!
KR:adding more solar and wind power increases dependence on fossil fuels, and doubles CO2 emissions.
No, I don’t just make stuff up without having data to back it up with.
“Rise in renewable energy will require more use of fossil fuels”
Why Will Emissions Double as We Add Wind and Solar Plants? [pg. 15]
“Adding wind and solar to Ontario’s grid drives CO2 emissions higher.”
Apparently you didn’t read the linked references supporting what I wrote. Would that have been difficult, or is it just easier to attempt to claim I am “making stuff up” again?
–
https://cna.ca/news/germany-replaces-nuclear-coal-ghgs-skyrocket/
“In 2013, Germany’s electrical production required a 44 percent rise in coal power. In fact, coal represented 45.5 percent of Germany’s power output, its highest level in 20 years.
Expect those numbers to rise, because Germany is building more coal plants, and expanding old mines. Progressive publications have taken notice. Mother Jones recently ran a profile of a German town first settled in Roman times that faced the threat of being bulldozed aside to make room for an open-pit coal mine.”
–
http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/france-germany-turn-coal/
France and Germany Turn To Coal
“Germany is replacing its nuclear units with renewable energy (wind and solar) as part of its energy transition, the so-called Energiewende. It is using mainly coal to back-up its intermittent renewable energy and as a result, it has increased its coal-fired generation. Due to the higher cost of wind and solar units, residential electricity prices have escalated and are 3 times that of the United States.”
Says the person who started this out by claiming something that turned out not to be true and was contradicted by the very person he claimed to be “right”.
Do you feel like you’re “winning” here, SebastianH? Because to me this post looks like another of your epic fails.
OK, I’ve now remembered why I rarely look in here. Mainly due to AndyG55’s unhelpful rants – even though I’m essentially on his side I really hope I never meet him.
But, Kenneth Richard, you’ve taken something out of context, and had a bit of a rant too, and since it’s about what I wrote, you get the response though you are not the worst, sorry.
SebastianH got a load of criticism for claiming wind replaces 3 times the primary energy from other sources:
‘1 GWh of renewable energy replaces roughly 3 GWh of fossil fuel energy, thus renewables are under-represented when looking at primary energy consumption.’
He’s sort of correct, he and I agree, it’s not wrong as far as it goes. So when he said I had it right, I’ve no objection to that.
But he’s exaggerating a bit – BP make it 2.6X not 3X. It only works if you are talking specifically about electricity generation, not heating (and we were talking about primary energy, so that counts). And even electricity production is moving toward gas in the UK and US – where the factor is nearer 2X. I would guess Sebastian and I would disagree on the best way forward from here. I’d build nukes to power sod’s EVs.
Anyway, bye all, have fun.
What Stuart wrote. I mainly thought about coal when claiming a factor of 3. Gas might be more a factor of 2 and the average might as well be 2.6 like the BP report says. Doesn’t really matter, you (Kenneth) – again – intentionally missunderstood what I have written. It’s becoming a pattern …
Regarding your sources, Kenneth: I can’t trust any of them, since you’ve shown you are perfectly able to copy soundbites out of papers that seem to support what you are claiming while the paper itself tells an entirely different story. So, no thank you, I’ll just go to the real source where the actual energy generation for every year and every resource is listed and do my own calculation. 2013 had 255.84 TWh of coal powered electricity generation. 2007, 2004 and 2003 have had more TWh. So no, 2013 wasn’t the highest level of coal powered electricity generation in 20 years. And looking at the entire time series you’d see that 2013 was an exception from the rule. Coal has steadily decreased from the on.
““For you everything a non-skeptic writes is per se wrong.””
In your case, its VERY CLOSE TO THE FACT.
You are perpetually WRONG from the very baseless foundation of your farcical AGW anti-CO2, anti-life religion.
SebastionH says
“proposals exist to turn off wind turbines in regions with bats at night and low winds. That would reduce their output, but not by much,”
I wonder if he realises just what he wrote here?
That TURNING OFF WIND TURBINES WOULD REDUCE THEIR OUTPUT, BUT NOT BY MUCH,
That is just so funny. Does this mean their normal output is also NOT MUCH, or that when turned off they continue to generate, but at reduced levels?
What a laugh sebH. Perhaps stand up comedy will be your calling!
I wonder if you read the sentence only to “at night” and not continued reading to “and low winds”.
That doesn’t happen too often and therefore the electricity output would not be reduced by much if wind turbines which have high bat casuality rates would do something like that.
Do you read everything with that amount of attention? Is that why you are a skeptic? 😉
Poor seb, caught out once again.
and then just doubles down on his error and ignorance.
And yes it does happen, VERY OFTEN.
You KNOW from your own calculations that wind in Germany produces less than 20% of its nameplate for something like 60-70% of the time and produced more than 50% of its nameplate for less than 5% of the time last year.
PATHETIC and FEEBLE to say the least.
No wonder you are still a brain-washed BELIEVER, when you DENY your own calculations.
What you are saying is that wind turbines don’t produce much, and therefore, turning them off means there is very little difference.
Well done, you may FINALLY have got somewhere close to REALITY..
.. just this once.
Yes SebH, I did read all of it. I’m still laughing!
So, if there happened to be little wind when the bats are flying, why turn them off. The tip speed of the blades under those conditions likely is insufficient to slice bats to pieces.
SebH, do you want to take a stab at explaining at what point in their lifetime, solar and wind generators begin to produce energy as a credit on the ledger. That is, at what point would their production of energy cancel out the amount of energy required to produce them.
Bats hunt in low winds and at night. To learn more read here: https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/10/saving-bats-from-wind-turbines/
Look it up and don’t ask random commenters on blogs! It depends on the location. PV systems produce the amount of energy needed for their production in around 1.5 years in Southern Europe and 2.5 years in Northern Europe. In Sicily it’s just around one year.
Wind turbines have an energy payback time of less than a year in most regions.
Nice catch.
“so rotor blades would be around 0.5-0.6% of our waste. Just to get a perspective of the “environmental nightmare”.”
so, CO2 can go up to 500, 600 ppm, without any problem at all.
thanks, bozo. !
make that 5000 to 6000 ppm.
according to you, 0.5%-0.6% is not a problem.
In the year 2011 plastic bags resulted in 68 kT of plastic waste in Germany. That’s almost double as much waste as rotor blades will ever be in the near future. Sorry, but the potential waste from rotor blades is no “environmental nightmare”, no more than plastic bags at least. Improvement is always good, but being an alarmist on this topic is just another form of gaslighting.
I suppose you also don’t mind that wind turbines are now the leading cause of multiple mortality events in bats, and bat populations may now face extinction because of wind turbines.
“The dust emitted in the grinding process of FRP creates occupational health and safety risks for workers. Inhalation, as well as skin and eye contact can produce moderate irritation to mucous membranes, skin, eyes, and coughing. Occupational exposure and prolonged inhalation of such particles have been found to produce alterations of the cellular and enzymatic components of the deep lung in humans, identified as acute alveolitis. … [H]azardous chemicals such as nitric acids and paraformaldehyde have been used in testing and development processes. … Occupational exposure to these chemicals can produce harmful respiratory diseases including potential nasal cancer, and dermal health effects. … Landfilling is especially problematic because its high resistance to heat, sunlight, and moisture means that it will take hundreds of years to degrade in a landfill environment. The wood and other organic material present in the blades would also end up in landfills, potentially releasing methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and other volatile organic compounds to the environment…produce toxic gases, smoke, and soot that can harm the environment and humans. Carbon monoxide and formaldehyde have been reported as residue from thermal degradation of epoxy resin. Another residue is carbon dioxide, which poses concerns regarding greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, about 60% of the scrap remains as pollutant ash after the incineration process…require fragmentation of the material into smaller pieces through mechanical processing before being fed into the reactors, increasing energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions….”
“Saving bats from wind turbines is easy”
https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/10/saving-bats-from-wind-turbines/
Mitigation is possible. Do you really oppose wind turbines because of bat deaths? And why do you try to use this to guilt wind power proponents?
I oppose wind turbines because they slam 200 tons of concrete and steel and unrecyclable chemicals into pristine landscapes, provide only intermittent and unreliable power with a worldwide consumption share of <1%, unnecessarily destroy wildlife (some bat populations are on pace to go extinct because of them), need regular repairs and maintenance (de-icing is fun, though), and they raise the costs of energy for 10s of millions of (poor) people such that large volumes of citizens in developed nations are living in energy poverty. And for what? What do we get out of wind energy? What’s the benefit?
Less CO2 output and cheaper energy in the long run. Look up the LCOE of wind (and solar) vs. fossile fuel for new powerplants.
Nobody has to live in “energy poverty” in Germany. Heating and electricity are paid for when you live on state money. However, I think that the “EEG-Umlage” should be a tax instead of a fee added to each kWh consumed. After all the “Energiewende” is an infrastructure project …
6.9 million people live in energy poverty in Germany. Electricity prices in Germany have increased by 80% since 2000, and Germans pay 3 times as much for their energy as Americans do. Between 2011 and 2015, about 330,000 poor people had their power cut off on a yearly basis…because they couldn’t afford to pay. But that’s OK. You just continue driving around in your Mercedes, SebastianH.
————————————————–
https://www.thelocal.de/20170302/over-300000-poverty-hit-german-homes-have-power-cut-off-each-year
Each year between 2011 and 2015, electricity providers cut off power to at least 300,000 German households who could no longer afford to pay their bills, the government revealed on Thursday.
The number of houses which could not afford electricity payments varied between 312,000 and 352,000. The power cut-offs were normally due to poverty, with people on state welfare very often affected. Meanwhile in 2015, 44,000 households had their gas supply cut off. [B]etween 15.7 percent and 16.7 percent of people in Germany are threatened with poverty.
“Energy poverty in Germany is a silent catastrophe for millions of people, especially in the cold, dark winter months,” said Eva Bulling-Schröter, energy spokeswoman for Die Linke.
————————————————–
The Poverty of Renewables
The poor, no surprise, have reduced their consumption by much more than 10%, whereas the rich have not reduced theirs at all. Over the past five years, heating a UK home has become 63% more expensive, while real wages have declined. Some 17% of households are now energy poor – that is, they have to spend more than 10% of their income on energy; and, because elderly people are typically poorer, about a quarter of their households are energy poor. Deprived pensioners burn old books to keep warm, because they are cheaper than coal, they ride on heated buses all day, and a third leave part of their homes cold.
In Germany, where green subsidies will cost €23.6 billion this year, household electricity prices have increased by 80% since 2000, causing 6.9 million households to live in energy poverty. Wealthy homeowners in Bavaria can feel good about their inefficient solar panels, receiving lavish subsidies essentially paid by poor tenants in the Ruhr, who cannot afford their own solar panels but still have to pay higher electricity costs.
The list goes on. In Greece, where tax hikes on oil have driven up heating costs by 48%, more and more Athenians are cutting down park trees, causing air pollution from wood burning to triple.
But climate policies carry an even larger cost in the developing world, where three billion people lack access to cheap and plentiful energy, perpetuating their poverty. They cook and keep warm by burning twigs and dung, producing indoor air pollution that causes 3.5 million deaths per year – by far the world’s biggest environmental problem.
Access to electricity could solve that problem, while allowing families to read at night, own a refrigerator to keep food from spoiling, or use a computer to connect with the world. It would also allow businesses to produce more competitively, creating jobs and economic growth.
Consider Pakistan and South Africa, where a dearth of generating capacity means recurrent blackouts that wreak havoc on businesses and cost jobs. Yet the funding of new coal-fired power plants in both countries has been widely opposed by well-meaning Westerners and governments. Instead, they suggest renewables as the solution.
But this is hypocritical. The rich world gets just 1.2% of its energy from hugely expensive solar and wind technologies, and we would never accept having power only when the wind was blowing. Over the next two years, Germany will build ten new coal-fired power plants to keep the lights on.
SebastianH:
Plastic bags degrade readily if exposed to sunlight and water. Far quicker than you think. I once had the unpleasant experience of picking up a plastic (4L) bottle from a window sill to have it disintegrate in my hand. It had been on the window sill for convenience in use in the laboratory, behind thick glass, for 18 months, possibly a little longer. Fortunately it was detergent solution, not the nitric acid in the next in the row.
Fibreglass laminates are far slower to degrade, depending on grades. At one of the fibreglass resin companies where I worked there was thought to include the original fibreglass boat made in Australia into an advertising campaign as it had passed its 25 year anniversary, despite being exposed to sunlight in Sydney Harbour all that time (sunlight in Sydney is far more severe than that in Germany). That was a basic grade, higher (more expensive) grades are expected to have even longer lifetimes, esp. underground.
I take your point about the economics etc. but is sticking some old blades in a hole in the ground really such a problem for the environment? If so, is it worse than the waste from any other form of generation?
I agree that landfilling is probably the least objectionable of all the options.
According to the paper:
“Despite its negative consequences, landfilling has so far been the most commonly utilized wind turbine blade disposal method. … Landfilling is especially problematic because its high resistance to heat, sunlight, and moisture means that it will take hundreds of years to degrade in a landfill environment. The wood and other organic material present in the blades would also end up in landfills, potentially releasing methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and other volatile organic compounds to the environment.”
“The estimated cost to put blade material in landfills, not including pretreatment and transportation costs, is approximately US $60 per ton. [A typical blade may weigh 30-40 tons]. In the United Kingdom, where landfilling organics is not yet prohibited, the active waste disposal cost (which includes plastics) is approximately US $130 per ton.”
“Despite an explosion in installed wind capacity since 1990, wind power had achieved just 0.39% of the world’s total energy consumption as of 2013.”
This argument is really really weak. I would stop using it, if i was you. It makes your whole line of argument even much weaker than it already is.
Data from 2013 is useless today. the situation is changing so fast, that this data is simply garbage.
the comparison to total energy, instead of electricity is simply a trick to mislead people. The uneducated right wing fools might like it,, but anyone with a working brain will see the trick at once. As Sebastian said above, you simply can NOT compare the numbers. It is total garbage.
The situation of wind (and solar is changing completely, because they became the cheapest new sources of electricity. We are breaking records every where:
India:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/record-level-of-wind-power-produced/articleshow/59259992.cms
the USA is above 10% now:
http://www.newsmax.com/Finance/StreetTalk/wind-solar-electricity-energy/2017/06/20/id/797104/
and the UK:
https://www.engadget.com/2017/06/08/uk-renewable-record-solar-wind-hydro/
sod said:
““Despite an explosion in installed wind capacity since 1990, wind power had achieved just 0.39% of the world’s total energy consumption as of 2013.”
This argument is really really weak. I would stop using it, if i was you. It makes your whole line of argument even much weaker than it already is. ”
(wish I knew how to block quote)
From BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2017 again – because I’ve got it open:
Total World primary energy usage 2016: 13,276.3 MTOe
Total World energy (renewables) 2016: 419.6 MTOe
… which is 3.2%,rounding up.
But this is “Based on gross generation from renewable sources including wind, geothermal, solar, biomass and waste, and not accounting for cross-border electricity supply. Converted on the basis of thermal
equivalence assuming 38% conversion efficiency in a modern thermal power station.”
So, not only is this figure inflated by a factor of 2.6 to equate electricity to primary energy, it’s for more than wind. So real energy from wind can’t be more than just over 1%.
Even if you accept the figure of 3.2%, which is better than 0.39%, I agree, it hardly weakens the argument…
“Even if you accept the figure of 3.2%, which is better than 0.39%, I agree, it hardly weakens the argument…”
again: the comparison is false. the comparison to total energy includes transportation which is mostly by petrol today. But when this switches to electricity, it will turn into one HALF immediately.
is this to difficult for you to understand?
roflmao.
What a load of fabricated rubbish, sob.
This is way off topic, but I joined in for some reason…
sod,
I’m comparing like for like and the 0.39% figure was for total energy which you rejected as coming from 2013. I showed a figure for 2016 which is probably as near to ‘now’ as we can get. Yes, it’s 10 times the figure for 2013, but it includes all sorts of other ‘renewables’ so it’s still really small. Maybe that will change, maybe not – but that is in the future, not today. The 3.2% of primary energy for renewables also includes a factor of 1/0.38 for the fact that it is electricity only, so we already said that the electricity coming from wind directly replaces a bigger proportion of primary energy from coal or whatever, specifically for electricity production. It’s not ‘total garbage’.
I didn’t look at your point that using total energy mis-represents winds contribution to electrical energy. It’s a fair point, but if you bring up EVs you are definitely back in total energy land again. EVs replacing petrol engines is another maybe for the future – it’s not in place today. I won’t argue with you about whether EVs are more efficient than petrol engines, they may well be, I’ve not looked at it – I do understand what you are saying, I never argued otherwise. A win to you if you like.
A complete debunking of sod and friends has recently been published in peer reviewed PNAS.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/06/21/renewable-energy-cost-and-reliability-claims-exposed-and-debunked/
“” quote you want “” with the quotation marks removed.
Oops. No help for you there. Sorry.
Well. I know how to do it, but not how to format an explanation that doesn’t get messed up because the site interprets the code as if I am using it.
Look for a good site that explains HTML formatting clearly, then practice using it in a browser like this one.
http://htmledit.squarefree.com/
Patience and perseverance will be rewarded. (I should write for “fortune cookie” magazine, eh?)
Thanks anyway
India narrative debunked here.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/06/25/indias-electricity-transformation/
The chatbots get everything wrong all the time without fail.
SebastianH 22. June 2017 at 1:04 PM
Now there is a statement I have never seen before and needs some serious backup material “1 GWh of renewable energy replaces roughly 3 GWh of fossil fuel energy”.
This wonderful new non dispatchable, non base load energy source is 3 times better than FF energy.
Even though it needs constant FF Energy backup to be of any use whatsoever.
So come on then Seb, let’s see all the peer reviewed Scientific papers backing up that claim.
That needs no science paper, you just have to read about how primary energy consumption is calculated. For fossil fuels it should be clear … gasoline used in cars is just that … so if you use 1 liter of gasoline ~10 kWh are added to primary energy consumption. A fossil fuel powerplant might use 10 kWh of coal and produce 3-4 kWh of electricity. Understood so far?
Nuclear power is mostly used for eletricity generation. To get a value for it’s resource consumption the world seems to have agreed on a 3:1 ratio. So for every kWh nuclear power plants generate, 3 kWh are added to primary energy consumption.
Renewables don’t have such a conversation rate, at least not in Germany. So 1 kWh or renewable electricity equals 1 kWh of primary energy consumption.
This results in an under-representation and to a replacement of around 3 GWh of primary energy consumption with 1 GWh when 1 GWh of renewables are added and coal electricity generation decreases by 1 GWh. That’s the electricity part of energy consumption.
On the gasoline front a vehicle consuming 5 liters per 100 km uses around 50 kWh of primary energy. The same vehicle converted to an electric drive would consume roughly have that in electricity and if this electricity comes from renewables also 2 GWh of primary energy consumption would be replaced by just 1 GWh of renewables without any change in the distance the vehicles travel.
Got it?
“a replacement of around 3 GWh of primary energy consumption with 1 GWh when 1 GWh of renewables are added and coal electricity generation decreases by 1 GWh.”
Double, sorry Triple accounting. And who says that coal electricity genertion decreases?????
My English must be either really bad or you don’t want to understand this. Which one is it?
Re-read my comment and maybe you’ll get it.
A coal power plant burns 3 GWh of coal to produce 1 GWh of electricity. So you have 3 GWh of primary energy consumption and 1 GWh of final energy consumption.
A renewable energy source like wind burns nothing when producing the same 1 GWh of electricity. So we have 1 GWh of primary energy consumption and 1 GWh of final energy consumption.
If you replace the 1 GWh of coal powered electricity by 1 GWh of renewable electricity, your primary energy consumption decreases by 2 GWh or from 3 GWh to 1 GWh. Simple math.
The BP statistical review of world energy: https://www.carbonbrief.org/in-depth-new-bp-data-shows-emissions-flat-2016-record-rise-renewables … electricity generation from coal decreases and coal mining decreases even more.
Seb, your stats are based on a LIE, just like everything else your child-mind “believes”
Get over it !!.
Wind turbines extract 35% of available energy at most.
Newest coal powered station in Japan extracts 55% of available energy.
Coal is currently being replaced by GAS.
Also the general worldwide downturn because of the ridiculous amount of money WASTED on unreliables, is starting to bite.
China is off-loading millions of cheap solar panels it has no use for, so solar set-ups are cheap.
And yet still the price of coking coal is at a 6 year high.
New renewables still provide just a TINY proportion (less than 2 or 3%) of world energy.
Either you are totally unaware of these facts…
….or you are LYING through your a*** as usual.
Maybe the readers find this link interesting: http://www.lifebrio.eu/expected-results/
Plastic bags and coffee ‘to-go’ cups are more of an environmental concern to me.
Let’s face it. Windmills are a bad idea.
Erecting these monstrosities should never have occurred, and every one of them should be decommissioned and destroyed at once. They kill thousands of birds and bats, their ugliness can best be descibed as sight pollution, their non-stop noise is damaging the health of all who live near them (including domestic and wild animals), they’re costly and inefficient and couldn’t exist without vast government subsidies (of our tax money), and they have only about a 23-year life expectancy before replacement (that is, if they’re not struck by lightning first which they often are.)
Yes, it would be costly to tear them down, but the damage they do with only a meager output (producing only when the wind is blowing)is, in the long run, even more costly.
The problem is that people who begin as interested in some area become partisans for some technology (in this case) and as they are bonded emotionally they refuse of acknowledge that the concept will not develop due to limitations that are inherent and simply insist that more (and more) is the solution. Wind machines are simply a source of very expensive energy and not much of that.
This experiment has already gone too far and should be terminated now. Existing wind machines should be completely removed as they fail in service to limit the amount of wasted resources. These are energy wasters not energy generators and we require energy at the lowest cost per unit generated to maintain affordability to people and heavy industry.
Oh oh!
https://www.euractiv.com/section/sustainable-dev/news/plastics-to-be-banned-from-european-landfill/
This COULD be a problem.
Then they’ll simply claim the turbine blades self-identify as organic and will be allowed to be buried like all other organics. Same way as persons can self-identify as one of 57 FB approved genders.
Problem Solved!!!
Most likely. =)
Could be a problem … not only for rotor blades, but also for 68 kT of platic bag waste
“Incineration of blades is another disposal method with potential for energy and/or material recovery…”
“In the United Kingdom, where landfilling organics is not yet prohibited, the active waste disposal cost (which includes plastics) is approximately US $130 per ton.”
Then we in the UK have the perfect solution – feed them into Drax instead of felled American forest,and perhaps generate more electricity than the wretched things do standing around the countryside.
I thought of suggesting that as a joke, but on searching about it I find there are those who are serious! I’ll pass on that pollution.j
I wasn’t serious! I must be careful who I mix with…
“I wasn’t serious!” – Stuart Brown
Sadly, there are some who are!
And this one by people opposed to the monstrosities!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/mothersagainstwindturbines.com/2014/09/04/finally-something-useful-to-do-with-turbine-blades-burn-em-for-fuel/amp/
Almost seems plausible until one reads this good supplement to the NTZ article.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/co2insanity.com/2011/06/12/broken-wind-turbine-blades-create-mountainous-waste-problem/amp/
While building a wind power project near us, one of the blades was damaged. Rather than trash it, they placed it beside the visitor’s center. It is at this location: {zoom in}
47.012861, -120.202028
Zoom out to view more of the project.
And here is a summary of the project with stats on sizes, weights, and so on: Fact Sheet
How many bats were killed and are being killed by Fukushima? Or Hanford?
Or by the insane foreign policy of the USA?
A message from the real world to the “sceptic” fairy tale wonderland:
“Coal India, the world’s largest producer of the fossil fuel, is closing 37 mines before March next year as it said they are no longer economically viable due to increasing competition from renewable energy sources.
The state-run company, responsible for about 82% of India’s total coal output, said the closures would save around 8 billion rupees ($124 million), The Telegraph India reported.
The country has also announced it will not build any more coal plants after 2022 and predicts renewables to account for more than half its power by 2027.”
http://www.mining.com/worlds-top-coal-producer-close-37-mines/
Mines and cola plants are being CLOSED. wind is taking over. INDIA (INDIA!!!) will stop building coal plants in the near future and is SAVING money by closing coal plants and mines.
The useless wind will make up 50% in 2027 (that is just 10 years from now!). But that is just normal facts from the rest of the world. You folks of course have your own, “alternative” facts….
India also just cancelled 13.7 GW of planned coal power plants projects for a similar reason:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/india-solar-power-electricity-cancels-coal-fired-power-stations-record-low-a7751916.html
What a pair of deceitful worms you AGW trolls are.
India, like China, have significantly overbuilt their capacity requirements for the medium-term future.
If you read your own links you would know that.
Why do you consistently LIE with intent to deceive ?
It seem to be a major part of your slimy, under-handed propagandist meme.
“What a pair of deceitful worms you AGW trolls are.”
it is bizarre that these sort of imnsults are how sceptics talk to people.
“ndia, like China, have significantly overbuilt their capacity requirements for the medium-term future.”
which part of NO NEW COAL PLANTS after 2022 did you not comprehend?
“Why do you consistently LIE with intent to deceive ?”
there is no lie in our posts above. I was simply quoting the facts as stated. we might already be BEYOND peak coal, you fools!
You LIE by omitting to mention the HUGE build-up of coal fired plants in the last several years.
What part of massive overbuilding do you not comprehend…
You are either deliberately LYING or you are being deliberately ignorant.
Nobody can figure out which.
Quote from the article:
Lying by omitting … oh dear AndyG55 … i missed you twisted logic and insult ridden comments in the last few days 😉 Keep going and make yourself look like the clown you are. How can you expect that anyone should take you serious?
Again, poor seb is trying to hide behind the FACT that both India and China over-estimated their energy requirements.
The only clowns here are you and your mate sob-sob. and NOBODY takes either of you in the least bit seriously.
Everybody knows you are both baseless AGW apostles/shills, with ZERO ability to back up even the most base level myth/lie of the AGW scam.
How’s the fossil fuel powered Mercedes going, btw, seb.
“Again, poor seb is trying to hide behind the FACT that both India and China over-estimated their energy requirements.”
you are approaching the horse from behind, AGAIN.
we told you, that this was overcapacity. we told you, that peak coal might have already been passed. we predicted tons of stranded assets in coal power. we predicted falling demand in developted countries and slowing demand in developing countries.
you were wrong on all of this and now use your false claims from the past to excuse the false claims your are making now.
everything you write is wrong.
“you are approaching the horse from behind,”
Its hard to communicate with you while you have your head up the horse’s arse, sob-sob. !!
Over-capacity will only last a short while.
The ONLY reason for falling coal demand in once developed countries is the massive subsidies paid for unreliables.
and of course GAS. !!
And ..oh look what’s happening
https://www.platts.com/podcasts-detail/spotlight/2017/june/asia-thermal-coal-prices-062317
Get your head out of the horse’s ar*e so that you can see something other than horse sh*t.
“that peak coal might have already been passed”
ROFLMAO
There you go with the FANTASY LAND BS again.
What sort of hallucinogenic cocktail do you smoke… It sure seems to produce a load of BS. !!
I posted this link above, but it bears repeating.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/06/25/indias-electricity-transformation/
“…as the Global Coal Plant Tracker revealed, there is nearly three times as much capacity in the pipeline but not started, as there is under construction. Given that the 50 GW under construction is already more than is needed, it is hardly surprising that projects not even started yet are being shelved.”
Lots more there showing the chatbots need massive reprogramming if they are to get anything right at all.
Tall buildings Like Trump towers…) kill more birds that wind power. fact.
“There are way more bird deaths from birds striking tall buildings, like the type of towers that the president owns, than there are from birds striking wind turbines,” Mandelbaum said. “If the president’s concerned, maybe he should take a look at his own portfolio.””
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/trumps-putdown-of-wind-energy-whips-up-a-backlash-in-iowa/2017/06/22/4e299a9a-578b-11e7-840b-512026319da7_story.html
“There are way more bird deaths from birds striking tall buildings, …. than there are from birds striking wind turbines”
Load of rubbish.
Mandelbaum is a lawyer for a rabid environmental cuase, and would never admit to knowing of the statistical maleficence that went into making up that fraudulent statistic. His “fact’s” are about as relevant to reality as Al Gore’s or any other AGW religion cultist.
Wouldn’t you have to look at bird deaths per tall building.
That is usually your get-out line, sob-sob.
Wasn’t there a discussion about pointless ad hominem attacks? Attack the argument not the person, AndyG55.
Causes of bird deaths:
– http://www.sibleyguides.com/conservation/causes-of-bird-mortality/
– http://www.currykerlinger.com/birds.htm
Glass windows are cleary dominating. Do you disagree?
roflmao.
So you actually BELIEVE these reports from WIND INDUSTRY consultants.
You actually BELIEVE they are based on actual FACTS ?????
You are truly the most GULLIBLE little AGW proponent in existence. !!!
seb, do you really DENY that “Mandelbaum is a lawyer for a rabid environmental cause”?
Are you that DEEP into DENIAL ?
LIE to yourself all you want…
… but it is pointless LYING to us.
Oh Andy, how I missed your BS … the comment section isn’t the same without you 😉
Seems you CAN’T STOP LYING, even to yourself.
“Do you really DENY that “Mandelbaum is a lawyer for a rabid environmental cause”?”
Simple question… and obviously you AGREE that he is.
“Glass windows are cleary dominating.”
And how many glass windows are there in the world, seb ???
Why did you avoid the point…
“Wouldn’t you have to look at bird deaths per tall building.”
Are you just being deliberately DISHONEST.. as usual, seb ??
Why would you want to look at deaths per tall building when you want to know what the top cause of bird deaths is. Do you also want to know how many birds a single cat kills?
What do you do with this figure? Compare it to the number of birds each wind turbine kills and then deduce that 1 cat is probably causing less bird deaths than one wind turbine?
EVASION of the FACTS, yet again seb.
Poor petal.
More ENRON accounting.
How many bats are killed by skyscrapers, sod? How many raptors?
Don’t use starlings and sparrows to cover up eagle and vulture elimination. And don’t forget the bats.
Can’t we just combine solar and wind technology and build gigantic SOLAR WIND TURBINES in orbit? That would look cool and all that glas fiber would just stay in orbit forever. Also it would be a great use for all of those rockets.
So I’m googling whether a “scientist” already suggested that. And I find:
Scientists suggest to put solar panels on wind turbine blades.
http://inhabitat.com/scientists-develop-solar-powered-wind-turbine/
Because electronics really likes being exposed to vibrations. Maybe we can get self-incinerating blades!
No reason to limit our utilization of wind power to a generation of electricity. How about an ocean transportation? Sailships had almost 100% of the commerce before 1800. Back to Wasa!
Sebastian H and Sod.
wind produced energy only accounts for 1.6% of total energy produced world wide. This information is from the Renewable Energy Policy Network (which is an advocate of wind and solar energy) see page 30 for the graph and break down of the energy supply source.
http://www.ren21.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/170607_GSR_2017_Full_Report.pdf
wind turbines actually consume electricity when the wind quits blowing, so your idea of turning off the turbines is laughable and terribly wasteful of energy. By the way wind turbines use almost 10% of the energy they produce to just keep the blades facing the wind and in proper tilt/angle of the blades, this energy is NOT subtracted from the reported energy they say is produced.
http://www.aweo.org/windconsumption.html
And just to make your brain go completely off the rails. Here’s an article on how just the production of electric cars produces more CO2 then 8 years of average use of an internal combustion engine.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/06/20/tesla-car-battery-production-releases-as-much-co2-as-8-years-of-gasoline-driving/
The Tesla story is simply false.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid-electric/news/a27039/tesla-battery-emissions-study-fake-news/
“By the way wind turbines use almost 10% of the energy they produce to just keep the blades facing the wind and in proper tilt/angle of the blades, this energy is NOT subtracted from the reported energy they say is produced.”
what are you talking about? This is at best the same with other sources! the wind power output is REAL.
Have you purchased or ordered that EV yet, sob-sob??
Are you mentally old enough to drive yet??
Why do you NEVER answer any questions about your EV…
… enquiring minds want to know 😉
Noted that you are STILL evading the question. !!
Obviously your rabid support for EVs doesn’t actually involve actually owning one. 😉
Its all just baseless, meaningless yapping.
No, it’s 1.6% of total final energy consumption. That’s an important difference. And it’s the percentage of all eletricity producing renewables, without hydropower.
Of course they do, but don’t believe BS on the internet that starts with “Could it be” and “is there some vast conspiracy”. Asking questions that imply something without actually saying that it’s the case … very classy.
“Hey, could it be that scott allen can’t swim? Nothing has been published to the contrary. If so he would drown when jumping into a pool.”
You see how this works? Nothing substantial in those sentences and yet most people reading this will think that you can’t swim.
From http://www.aweablog.org/fact-check-wind-turbines-produce-much-more-energy-than-they-consume/
“After generating 7,327 megawatt hours, the turbine consumed only 12.7 megawatt hours.”
Yeah, some magazine started with the 8 year thing and compared a Tesla S with a gasoline car that uses 5.4 liters of gas per 100 km. Well done magazine! Also well done half the internet for unreflected re-publishing of that story instead of just reading the actual study that makes no mention of something like that and includes figures for CO2 emissions to produce a battery pack in different countries (with different CO2 per kWh output).
Compare a Tesla S to a more comparable Mercedes E Class with similar engine power and you’ll have CO2 parity in less than 60000 km.
Has your brain gone off the rails, because of all the corrections? Nothing you wrote is actually true … well done!
Well seb, when are you getting a Tesla… rather than your Mercedes.
Or are you just on yet another hypocritical mindless rant ??
Very obviously, you DO NOT BELIEVE most of the CRAP that you write. !!
Your claim that wind turbines produce more energy, then stated by the Renewable Energy Group is non sense, what happens to the excess energy you say is being produced by the wind turbines. Does it just disappear and no one uses it. If it is not being consumed why produce it.
Even by your own admission/claim wind turbines use energy.
Your claim of parity in less then 600,000 km is equally laughable, that would be 372,822 miles. I think by the time that either vehicle reaches that milage they would have been sent to the scrap heap. (Tesla’s batteries need to be replace at about 150,000 mile, even by the most optimistic company estimates).
That is an amazing reply. You managed to get everything wrong again. Has your brain really gone “off the rails”? 😉
The produced energy of wind turbines gets consumed by you and me … the end users of electricity.
Not consumed by the turbine itself. Did you not read the complete sentence?
Yes, 12.7 MWh during the same time it produced 7327 MWh of electricity.
You probably need glasses. One less zero at the end … 60000 km.
Tesla gives 8 years warranty without a km/mile limitation. Tesla Model S cars with more than 300000 km distance driven exist …
lol! Here’s one für sod: http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/22/wapo-points-out-flaws-with-solar-power-after-trump-suggests-putting-panels-on-the-border-wall/?utm_campaign=atdailycaller&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social
On the “problem” of vertical panels, a simple angle bracket will do the job. Moreover, the power could be supplied to all the factories located just south of the border.
That would be wonderful, the US supplying Mexico with cheap solar power and this somehow pays for the wall 😉 Trump, our master dreamer 😉
The concept of cheap solar is obviously meaningless to you seb.
Take your foot out of your mouth…
… and try another irrelevant child-minded analogy !!
I’ve seen a proposed design for said wall, designed by REAL engineers !
It would certainly work at least as well as normal solar panels, and the fact that it would have panels facing in different directions as the wall winds its way through the countryside, makes it more reliable than a fixed direction set-up.
Gees seb, I thought you would have been totally for the idea……
… or is it a bad idea just because of where it came from. 😉
A solar farm, with an actual REAL and WORTHWHILE PURPOSE…
… an amazing thought !
No wonder the greenies, and the AGW cultists and scammers are against it.
“… or is it a bad idea just because of where it came from.”
it did not come from Trump. Why do you believe all his obvious lies?
Poor sob-sob, played like the fool he is.
You are so predictably DUMB !!!!
“It would certainly work at least as well as normal solar panels, and the fact that it would have panels facing in different directions as the wall winds its way through the countryside, makes it more reliable than a fixed direction set-up.”
no. you know absslutely nothing about this subject, do you?
Oh dear, sob-sob doesn’t know about solar tracking, and the FACT that panels facing a variety of directions gives a longer, flatter daytime solar output. Too much to figure out, is it, little troll ??
The ignorance is strong with little sob-sob. !
“On the “problem” of vertical panels, a simple angle bracket will do the job. Moreover, the power could be supplied to all the factories located just south of the border.”
this is a typical Trump thing.
everything about it is wrong. This was not his idea, the wall will not be build, the Mexicans will not pay for it and it will not have solar panels.
What would happen, if the Trump lies turned true for once?
Then you would have invested billions of dollars into solar panels on the mexican side of the border and not one of it would survive the first year of mexicans paying the wall.
“into solar panels on the mexican side of the border and not one of it would survive the first year of mexicans ”
Which is precisely the reason that Trump wants to halt the flow of Mexicans into the USA.
The only time you take your left foot out of your mouth, sob-sob.. is to make room for your right foot.
One funny fact, before Trump claims that he said it first: Of course any kind of border construct these days will come with a lot of technical equipment and will be run on solar and battery. So the wall will massively profit from real people investing in real solar PV.
And as Trump will claim that any kind of fence build with any kind of money at any piece of the border was his idea and is his wall, he will also claim the single solar panel stuck on a border fence is his “solar wall”
Your ignorance of what is going on is quite hilarious.
Your manic hatred of Trump, the DULY ELECTED POTUS, is quite bizarre, and can only come from your deep-seated far-left insanity.
Two climate change videos from Jo Nova. Enjoy the politics. 🙂
https://player.vimeo.com/video/124391891
https://player.vimeo.com/video/124392955
this is damaging to a great show.
look, american comedy is great these days, because the comedians and night talkers are telling the TRUTH about trump.
Comedy that is always lying, like this piece, is garbage.
poor sob-sob.. please don’t have tanty.. I would laugh too much.
The TRUTH is never part of your meme is, it little child.
You probably don’t even comprehend half of what was said.
American comedy… low-level, low-IQ, zero-thought pap…
… just down your alley.
Andy, you just wrote a dozen posts without a single argument.
sob-sob.. you have just spent over 2 years writing posts with no rational argument or science in them.
And plenty of content in my posts, if you can actually read and comprehend what I said.
Do at least TRY. !!
“this is damaging to a great show.”
On the contrary, it takes the show where it has always been…
…. making a MOCKERY of current agendas.
Sorry you don’t have the wit to understand the humour, sob-sob.
“…. making a MOCKERY of current agendas.”
you did not understand the show.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister
roflmao.
It seems English is your third or fourth language.
One you barely comprehend. !!
Either that, or you are the dimmest bulb in the pack.
Wind turbines require far more energy in their construction, maintenance, backup and decommissioning than they can ever produce in their lifetime. In addition, these grotesque monstrosities kill birds and bats, destroy wildlife habitat, pollute landfills, and the mining of their rare earth elements pollute vast amounts of ground water. There is nothing “economic” nor “green” about wind power.
“Wind turbines require far more energy in their construction, maintenance, backup and decommissioning than they can ever produce in their lifetime. ”
no. come on, why are people believing such garbage? this is stupid!!!
Why do you believe people who produce propaganda pap for the wind turbine industry??
Its GARBAGE and misinformation.
Are you REALLY that GULLIBLE, little sob-sob????
On which disinformater website have you read those things, MikeW? Do you really think that wind turbines are an energy sink? Have you ever thought on checking if that is actually a valid statement?
SebH, you might not have read it, but I asked if you would like to indicate how long it takes for wind and solar electricity generators to recover the energy required to produce and install these things.
That is, how long into their lifetime is it before there is a positive result.
I suspect they don’t produce an awful lot on the positive side of the ledger before they are knackered.
wind pays back in months. Both wind and solar have now good pay back times, even including some battery storage.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/wind-and-solar-harvest-enough-energy-now-to-pay-back-manufacture-plus-add-storage/
Aren’t subsidies grand. 😉
“Aren’t subsidies grand.”
your comments are stupid beyond belief. energy pay back has no connection to subsidies at all.
But yes, subsidies for renewables have worked great, because they are the cheapest new source of electricity today.
chapeau, you managed to make two gigantic false claims in a three word sentence!
Answered that below. Energy payback time for wind is under a year, solar in Sicily is around a year, Solar in Southern Europe is 1.5 years and Solar in Northern Europe around 2.5 years.
Don’t trust your feelings (“I suspect”) … lookup the numbers yourself if you don’t trust a random guy on the internet providing them for you because you can’t use a search engine 😉
Looks like payback time for smaller turbines for individual properties is quoted as between ten to fifteen years.
I suspect your months payback ideas utilize some rather creative accounting. And LARGE SUBSIDIES.
I don’t believe any significant investment can pay for itself so quickly.
Robert, the “payback” referred to here is not monetary, it’s the amount of time it takes for the increase in CO2 emissions involved in the production of the wind turbine (steel, cement, transport, installation equipment…) to “pay for” itself in “saved” CO2 emissions upon use.
Not one of the wind propaganda sites, that is for sure.
Truth is NOT in their agenda.
“Not one of the wind propaganda sites, that is for sure.”
wind power is producing up to 50% of electricity in several countries and states. they would have figured out, if they did not produce anything at all by now.
In the real world, greenpeace was doing a realistic assessment of renewables, while the EIA got it about as wrong as is possible. Most of the time they were predicting renewable percentages for the future that were already reached ion reality.
https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i8F.GB.lxH2g/v2/1200x-1.png
The facts support my side on this topic and completely contradict “sceptic” positions…
The share of energy consumption from wind is less than 1% on a worldwide scale. In contrast, consumption of oil, coal, and natural gas have exploded at a pace that far exceeds “renewables”….
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/World_energy_consumption.svg/1200px-World_energy_consumption.svg.png
For wind or solar to overtake fossil fuels, they’re going to have to be consumed at a pace that exceeds the (absolute) growth in fossil fuels consumption. And that hasn’t happened despite the exponential growth in wind and solar capacity. Wind and solar have to put more than just a dent in market share. And they haven’t even done that.
Coal is decreasing for several years now (even your graph clearly shows that): https://www.carbonbrief.org/in-depth-new-bp-data-shows-emissions-flat-2016-record-rise-renewables
Renewables and nuclear (both CO2 free) covered half the increase in energy consumption in 2016. And “At recent rates of growth of 16% per year, these renewable sources would outpace the current output from nuclear by 2019, hydro by 2022 and gas by 2030.”
That’s exponential growth for you. As with other things that involve numbers, you are either intentionally missunderstanding how things work or just don’t know better. I lean to the first explanation.
What you apparently are not understanding is that even if, at some point, the growth in capacity of renewables outpaces the absolute growth in fossil fuels, that doesn’t mean that fossil fuels are being displaced, or consumed less. Fossil fuel consumption will not have disappeared. It’s still there, growing too, even if it isn’t by very much. And if there is no absolute reduction in the consumption of fossil fuels, then the goal of actually reducing CO2 emissions will not have been realized.
The recent rates of growth of 16% per year were also occurring in the 1980s. And yet the claim that it would only take 5-10 years to outpace other sources didn’t happen. Why? Because the others grew too…and by more. Exponential growth in wind and solar does not exist in a vaccum. Exponential growth exists in a market. And the share of consumption for wind and solar combined is currently about 1% despite the rapid growth in capacity during the last few decades.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/06/16/1610381114.full.pdf
Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar
“wind power is producing up to 50% of electricity in several countries and states.”
Tiny out of the way countries that never had a decent power supply to start with.
You would NEVER live like those people are forced to, with intermittent power supply.
You are WAY too hypocritical for that.
How’s the EV going, btw??
Why the continued DECEIT and mis-information, sob-sob.??
And Greenpiece. roflmao !!!! Environmental criminals. !!
You truly “believe” their LIES and BS, don’t you, poor gullible little child.
“The share of energy consumption from wind is less than 1% on a worldwide scale.”
this number is completely irrelevant to this discussion. IF wind power was using more electricity than it produces, the places with high wind penetration would notice immediately.
solar will kill coal fast. Looking at the past will not help you. the facts are clear.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-15/solar-power-will-kill-coal-sooner-than-you-think
“The share of energy consumption from wind is less than 1% on a worldwide scale.”
It’s only “irrelevant” to you because you don’t like it. Of course the consumption of wind power relative to other energy sources is relevant to a discussion of the efficacy of wind energy.
As for your link, if coal is getting killed, it’s not from solar. It’s from an explosion in the production and consumption of natural gas. Natural gas is increasingly the fossil fuel energy of choice.
“It’s only “irrelevant” to you because you don’t like it.”
no. your argument and its logic is false.
It has the same structure like this:
nuclear does not work. It has a similar percentage of global power as renewables have.
sod, it is the consumption of fossil fuels that lead to increases in CO2 emissions. Relative to a change in the amount of consumed fossil fuels, the installed capacity of wind turbines and solar panels – or how much of a country’s wind and solar electricity is generated now compared to 2000 – is rather unmeaningful. If you want to reduce CO2 emissions, you must reduce fossil fuel consumption. To do that, the share of non-fossil fuel energies consumed must increase substantially so as to replace or supplant the consumption of fossil fuels. So, contrary to your contentions, the consumption share for fossil fuels relative to the consumption share of non-fossil fuel energies is entirely relevant.
You like to misleadingly say that Costa Rica runs on 100% renewables. My, that sounds impressive. When we look further into it, though, the share of energy actually consumed in Costa Rica is 70% fossil fuels. You find the 70% irrelevant, of course, and you wish to instead point to the “100% renewables” (electricity only). I understand why you do that, but pointing out that Costa Rica’s energy consumption is 70% fossil fuels is not “false logic.” It’s just…reality.
“your argument and its logic is false. ”
Your hallucinogenic state precludes you having even the most basic rational logic. !!
It is YOU that is irrelevant, a far-left anti-science NON-ENTITY !
Costa Rica, is mostly hydro.
wind and solar.. a bit player at most
WHY do you ALWAYS refuse to tell the whole TRUTH , sob-sob ???
Is LYING really your whole pitiful existence?
Kenneth, haven’t you seen my inbetween reply?
They are already covering half of the yearly increase in energy consumption (rest, see above).
Continue the current trends just 5-10 years and you’ll have decreasing absolute values for fossil-fuel energy consumption/production.
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