[HN Gopher] Wind farms can offset their emissions within two yea...
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Wind farms can offset their emissions within two years, new study
shows
Author : geox
Score : 78 points
Date : 2024-05-16 17:48 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newsroom.taylorandfrancisgroup.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newsroom.taylorandfrancisgroup.com)
| butternick wrote:
| But how much energy is used to create the wind farm?
| floren wrote:
| That's exactly the question the study was answering
|
| > The study reviewed current literature on wind farms, as well
| as using real construction data to take into account everything
| from the manufacturing of individual turbine parts, to
| transporting them into place, to decommissioning the entire
| wind farm at Harapaki - which comprises 41 turbines.
| yareal wrote:
| A lot less than they create? Like, if it was a negative return
| on investment, energy wise, no one would be building wind
| farms.
|
| Wind turbines produce whole integer MW, which is way more than
| they cost to make.
| pedroma wrote:
| >negative return on investment, energy wise, no one would be
| building wind farms
|
| I don't think it's this simple considering politics is
| usually involved.
|
| But if it was a simple profit question I still don't think
| people would be building wind farms.
| Alupis wrote:
| Exactly right. Government subsidies makes a lot of things
| appear viable and/or affordable, when in reality they are
| not. Subsidies are bolstered by politics.
|
| Wind farms appear as ridiculous as they are. Yet... they
| keep getting built because there's government money to be
| made. There's government money to be made because they give
| the appearance of "doing something, anything" while in fact
| doing almost nothing. Follow the votes...
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Wind farms generate substantial quantities of power at
| like $0.04/kwh unsubsidized - they're in no way
| ridiculous. California generates well over 10% of their
| total electricity demand via wind, Texas is closer to 25%
| of their total demand (more than coal and nuclear
| combined). Hundreds of thousands of cheap, carbon-free
| GWh produced is an odd definition of "doing almost
| nothing".
| Alupis wrote:
| They are ridiculous for a number of reasons, including
| the quantity needed and the storage problem. Neither are
| trivial issues to solve - making any stand-alone
| production numbers meaningless.
|
| The obvious answer has been staring us in the face for
| decades. Yet... underinformed electorate continues to be
| unrationally scared, making it politically infeasible.
|
| We could have been 100% "green" energy decades ago. Let
| that sink in... follow the votes.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| "Wind can't be the entire solution" is such a different
| statement than whatever this misinformed smug dismissal
| is trying to get at.
| Alupis wrote:
| If you were able to read the statement you would clearly
| see no such thing.
|
| Erecting more and more wind farms to make you feel fuzzy
| at night is absurd. We have the solution - metaphoric you
| just doesn't want it because _reasons_.
| verall wrote:
| I think it's fun to imagine that this solution you're
| miming at is closer to soylent green rather than only-
| viable-through-subsidies nuclear.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| >> including the quantity needed
|
| Texas power has gone negative, CA has dropped to zero.
| That means power flowing on to the grid either has no
| where to go or is only being charged transmission fees
| (and those in CA are gonna be excessive).
|
| Transmission and storage are big issues. But they are
| solvable ones. Storage can be localize and the grid can
| be upgraded (and needs to be).
|
| Candidly we need to look for ways to decouple energy
| creation, storage and transmission from each other. How
| do I buy enoung fractional shares in creation and storage
| so I only have to pay the cost of transmission? How do I
| make my utility into an asset!
| thebruce87m wrote:
| > Wind farms appear as ridiculous as they are.
|
| What do you mean by this? My country is mostly powered by
| wind.
|
| Edit: https://electricityproduction.uk/in/scotland/
| Alupis wrote:
| Scotland is microscopic in relation to the landmass and
| population that is the US. Yet... look at the sheer
| volume of wind turbines Scotland has to operate to get
| anywhere between 10% - 80% of their power generation,
| depending on the day and wind conditions.
|
| You cannot build a reliable grid based on wind. It
| requires other non-temperamental energy sources to be
| available when the wind isn't blowing. Solar? What if
| it's an overcast day?
|
| If you look at that chart - you'll notice Nuclear takes
| over the heavy lifting when necessary. So... why not just
| have a couple more nuclear plants and forgo the
| unreliable sources?
|
| Using wind and/or solar does not automagically make your
| system better or more green. People have pigeon-holed
| themselves into a reality where only wind and solar are
| acceptable... and then we hide away the actual sources
| that provide the necessary backfill.
| pedroma wrote:
| I'm not sure the linked study has accounted for the
| energy required to acquire and operate the batteries used
| alongside these wind farms. But it would be interesting
| to see what percentage batteries factor into this
| equation. I would imagine it's massive.
| Alupis wrote:
| > I would imagine it's massive.
|
| It has to be massive. There is no other way to manage a
| 70% production swing in as short as a couple minutes and
| not have the grid go dark. Which then begs the question
| of how green the batteries are over decades.
|
| We've picked the least reliable energy source and
| intellectually anchored ourselves to it - then we don't
| talk about how we _actually_ keep the lights on 24 /7.
| It's kind of nuts.
| 2024throwaway wrote:
| As nuts as just burning anything flammable we can get our
| hands on?
| ck425 wrote:
| No one's suggesting 100% wind or solar but we can still
| improve the system with more. Plus both are incredibly
| quick to build compared to nuclear and fossil fuels, so
| if you're a country dependant on those (like the UK) it's
| one of the best ways to quickly improve your energy
| security.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| _Yet... look at the sheer volume of wind turbines
| Scotland has to operate_
|
| What 'sheer volume'? You didn't give any numbers or
| sources.
|
| Here is some actual information:
|
| https://www.gov.scot/publications/renewables-and-wind-
| power-...
|
| " In 2022, almost 28 TWh of zero carbon electricity was
| generated by renewable wind in Scotland, representing 35%
| of all wind generation in the UK. This could power the
| equivalent of approximately:
|
| a. 10 million households - over a third of the total
| households in the UK. b. 85% of total Scottish annual
| electricity demand."
|
| _It requires other non-temperamental energy sources to
| be available when the wind isn 't blowing. Solar? What if
| it's an overcast day?_
|
| Good thing the entire UK is on a shared grid.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grid_(Great_Britai
| n)
|
| _Using wind and /or solar does not automagically make
| your system better or more green._
|
| Why not?
|
| _People have pigeon-holed themselves into a reality
| where only wind and solar are acceptable..._
|
| Says who?
|
| _and then we hide away the actual sources that provide
| the necessary backfill._
|
| What does this mean? People are happy that there are
| economically viable and scalable sources of electricity
| that don't burn oil and gas. Who is 'hiding' anything
| away?
| verall wrote:
| > What does this mean?
|
| The powers that be are hiding our most renewable resource
| - ourselves. We just someone to make a tiktok dance out
| of jumping into the bioreactor and then we won't need any
| evil wind turbines or PVs anymore.
| pounderstanding wrote:
| Uranium deposits are relatively small. It will last 200
| years or so.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Subsidies are bolstered by politics.
|
| That right there is irony.
| 7952 wrote:
| The main reason for subsidy is that the costs are all
| upfront and electricity prices are unpredictable. That is
| not a problem that is unique to wind, particularly in the
| climate change era. Systems like strike prices can be
| competitively priced and avoid overpayment.
|
| Arguably the main problem is that countries take a
| natural monopoly and then try and treat it like a market.
| When a well run state company could invest with more
| certainty.
| nerdbert wrote:
| They can be built much more quickly than nuclear plants
| and they take coal and oil out of furnaces right now,
| which is exactly what we need. That's nothing but good.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Seriously did nobody read the article?! The article was
| specifically about this question, windfarms generate all
| the energy they needed to make them in 2 years time. This
| is completely unrelated to government subsidies.
|
| Sometimes I loose faith in humanity.
| yareal wrote:
| I didn't speak to profit. I spoke to energy return.
| pedroma wrote:
| My answer applies to both cases actually.
|
| For example, if one wanted to maximize profits, energy
| wise, there are better options than wind turbines and
| batteries. The choice to go with wind seems politically
| motivated due to optics of the alternatives.
| andyferris wrote:
| I thought wind was often quoted as the cheapest per MWh
| compared to everything else?
|
| (I realise that profit in $ might differ in that the wind
| doesn't blow on demand while eg gas might - but even then
| businesses will spring up to fill every profitable
| niche).
| garbageman wrote:
| Maybe 20 years ago. On-shore wind and solar are currently
| the cheapest practical way to make electricity based on
| LCOE.
|
| https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/electricity_generation/p
| df/...
| pedroma wrote:
| I'm not familiar with this metric but does it at least
| account for the cost that non-wind sources must incur to
| keep their facilities running? For example, if you have a
| wind farm you will prioritize using that energy when
| available, but the natural gas facility still needs to
| employ people for low wind situations right?
|
| So the natural gas facility is not generating very much
| most of the year, but still needs quite a bit of people
| with the expertise to keep it operational despite that in
| addition to land lease costs, equipment maintenance etc.
| Does LCOE turn the cost of the natural gas facility cost
| into $0 during those situations to be fair?
|
| -
|
| Edit: Just glanced at the Wikipedia article and the
| variables involved in the LCOE equation. Seems to
| unfairly benefit wind and solar.
|
| "One of the most important potential limitations of LCOE
| is that it may not control for time effects associated
| with matching electricity production to demand."
|
| "In particular, if the costs of matching grid energy
| storage are not included in projects for variable
| renewable energy sources such as solar and wind, they may
| produce electricity when it is not needed in the grid
| without storage. The value of this electricity may be
| lower than if it was produced at another time, or even
| negative."
| yareal wrote:
| It's not either or, it's both and. Of course there are
| different options that have better results in some axes.
| Building wind does not mean not building nuclear, solar,
| hydro, tidal, biomass pyrolysis, etc.
| pedroma wrote:
| Yes, but due to the nature of wind being fickle, we have
| to keep these other energy facilities running and people
| employed. This adds to the costs of these other energy
| solutions while they are doing very little while wind is
| blowing. This messes all these metrics up.
| uoaei wrote:
| > if it was a negative return on investment, energy wise
|
| Unfortunately, cost does not track emissions that closely.
| People do all sorts of things that cause emissions all the
| time, and usually their choice is dictated by which option is
| lowest cost.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| Who cares? What matters is the emissions, which is exactly what
| this article is about.
| telepathy wrote:
| Their OWN emissions? Wow...
| christkv wrote:
| There is still the problem of recycling the blades.
| https://theconversation.com/wind-turbine-blades-inside-
| the-b....
| xnx wrote:
| Why do blades need to be recycled? What's the harm in piling
| them up on empty land until someone finds use for them (or
| not)?
| vuln wrote:
| Could take the same route with nuclear waste imho.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Except old turbine blades tend not to leak out and make
| surrounding land unlivable by humans.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| This not a battle between nuclear and wind. Why not use
| both? Nuclear has dangers (which people are learning to
| mitigate) but wind, solar, and geothermal cannot be used
| in every situation. When no better choice exists we
| _should_ embrace nuclear.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| That's basically what's happening with them besides the
| ones that are burned or buried.
|
| One potentially bad thing is that plastics degrade and
| leach into the environment over time.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| Is it preferable to burn coal and natural gas then? I'm
| not saying you're wrong (you could be right) but let's
| not forget why we are pushing for renewable energy.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Definitely better than burning coal. Doesn't mean we
| shouldn't look for ways to reduce or recycle waste
| products.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| We need to be considering the impact of any big changes we
| make in regards to our energy. But the thing is, we already
| know the answers to most of these "but what about"
| questions and they've been answered time and time again,
| yet they keep being brought up and used in an effort to
| slow progress.
|
| Which is worse, the __________ caused by technology Z or
| the airborne carbon dioxide they prevent?
|
| THE CARBON DIOXIDE IS WORSE, most of the time.
|
| Can we at least start at a place of _the carbon dioxide is
| worse_ and go from there? I 'm not against listening to
| reason, I'm just against people looking for every reason
| _not_ to change how we gain and consume our energy.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| This is actually why I tell people recycling is mostly
| bad. The impact of some plastic in the landfill is less
| than the extra carbon emissions.
| XorNot wrote:
| I straight up do not care a about plastic use at all
| anymore.
|
| Specifically: provided the plastic is going to well-
| managed landfill, and not being washed into the oceans or
| waterways, then really, what is the problem? Once in
| landfill it's CO2 which won't end up in the atmosphere,
| or water, or really doing much of anything while it just
| sits there.
|
| And every bit of it is oil production which _won 't_ be
| burned.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _And every bit of it is oil production which won 't be
| burned._
|
| Some plastics get incinerated, it isn't all sequestered
| in landfills.
| CyanBird wrote:
| The blades could easily be cut and used as modern "sleek"
| housing, or games for kids in parks
|
| There is market for that I feel
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| We do need to disassemble them and move them somewhere, so
| those costs should be included. Perhaps they should be made
| to where they can be broken down into sections and reused
| as durable seawall filler or as construction filler in
| levees or dams.
| ajuc wrote:
| How's the recycling of burned oil and coal going?
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| Let's start off with just the cleaning off vehicles and
| people merely to move tar sands sludge around the ground
| that goes everywhere.
| xnx wrote:
| That's an amazing investment if it can pay for itself entirely in
| 2 years and keep generating money after that.
| pedroma wrote:
| That would be amazing if it was the case (and wind would get a
| lot more support if so), but it doesn't say that. It says it
| pays for itself emissions-wise.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| It says "can" and op said "if". Is not one else seeing how
| these posts are pandering?
| tills13 wrote:
| In a moral society, paying off the environmental deficit of
| production is as important as the monetary deficit.
| ggm wrote:
| A conversation about second order effects against first order
| deliverables. This is proof of the obvious because very few
| people seriously believed their emission cost inputs exceeded
| their energy production, it's been necessary to prove it because
| of politics, not serious scientific questions to their aggregate
| burden.
|
| During early years on lower efficiency sure, it's possible wind
| and solar had higher input costs and lifetime burdens than they
| produced. We're well beyond that phase now.
|
| If you don't think this, ask yourself if the gas wastage,
| consumption and fugitive emission at production and supply chain
| facilities in aggregate is ever costed against the energy returns
| through the use of the product. I never see serious analysis of
| things like fugitive gas emissions on the cost side of gas
| production overall. CCS had no solution for this. It's huge.
| xenonite wrote:
| Massive amounts of carbon fiber used in wind blades is coming
| from ... oil. So same problem here. And it becomes unusable
| toxic waste.
| phero_cnstrcts wrote:
| These studies are funded by the companies anyway. Can't ever
| trust them.
| XorNot wrote:
| We don't _burn_ the wind turbine blades when we use them, nor
| when they break.
|
| The scale of issue in dealing with a bunch of solid waste you
| can just bury compared to climate change is insignificant.
| xcskier56 wrote:
| Well... technically... some people are starting to
| https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/articles/carbon-rivers-
| make... but this also produces energy and compared to the
| amount of electricity they produce during their lifetime
| this carebon can only be incredibly negligible
| XorNot wrote:
| Pyrolysis is not burning - from your link:
|
| > Carbon Rivers' recycling uses pyrolysis--a process
| during which organic components of a composite (e.g.,
| resins or polymers) are broken down with intense heat in
| the absence of oxygen and separated from the inorganic
| fiberglass reinforcement.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Massive on a personal scale but miniscule compared to the
| scale of oil production and combustion.
|
| So many people are worried about small scale downsides to
| technologies that are trying to address truly massive
| problems.
| glenstein wrote:
| Right, and this is what makes it such a frivolous talking
| point. I mean, if it really were the case that the
| expenditures of oil were indeed at scales that overwhelmed
| any advantages of wind, that would be a legit argument.
|
| But to make that case you'd actually have to do the next
| step of assessing the _relative_ scales of how much oil
| gets used compared to an alternative case where the same
| amount of energy is produced from fossil fuels.
|
| I feel like if we're going to bring up the fossil fuel
| inputs into the creation of critical components for
| windmills, the mandatory next sentence has to be an
| acknowledgment of the scale of consumption necessary,
| compared to the scale of what's being offset. Otherwise
| it's a throwaway line with no context.
| glenstein wrote:
| And to your point, albeit with a more frivolous example, wind
| power has been subject to tests for aesthetic satisfaction that
| never have to be passed with such regularity by, say, telephone
| wires, roads or sidewalks, other forms of electricity
| infrastructure, big box stores, oil and gas infrastructure, gas
| stations, etc.
|
| In some cases if you even ask the question you might be
| dismissed as a crank because, well, roads and sidewalks can
| crumble and fall into disrepair, but obviously we're not going
| to just get rid of sidewalks and roads. There's kind of an
| unspoken and shared understanding that the necessity of the
| infrastructure trumps aesthetic concerns.
|
| Status quo extremism might be summed up by the demand that new
| things have to pass novel and specific tests that would never
| be applied to the status quo.
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