Accelerate the World's Transition to Sustainable Energy - to fight Anthropogenic Climate Change, page-485 - HotCopper | ASX Share Prices, Stock Market & Share Trading Forum

Originally posted by pints: ↑

Food forThought!

Right nowthe average wind farm is about 150 turbines.

Each windturbine needs 80 gallons of oil as lubricant and we're not talking aboutvegetable oil, this is a PAO synthetic oil based on crude... 12,000 gallons ofit. That oil needs to be replaced once a year.

It isestimated that a little over 3,800 turbines would be needed to power a city thesize of New York... That's 304,000 gallons of refined oil for just onecity. Now you have to calculate every city across the nation, large andsmall, to find the grand total of yearly oil consumption from "clean"energy. Where do you think all that oil is going to come from, the oilfairies?

Not tomention the fact that the large equipment needed to build these wind farms runon petroleum. As well as the equipment required for installation, service,maintenance, and eventual removal.

And justexactly how eco-friendly is wind energy anyway? Each turbine requires afootprint of 1.5 acres, so a wind farm of 150 turbines needs 225 acres; Inorder to power a city the size of NYC you'd need 57,000 acres; and who knowsthe astronomical amount of land you would need to power the entire US. All of whichwould have to be clear-cut land because trees create a barrier & turbulencethat interferes with the 20mph sustained wind velocity necessary for theturbine to work properly (also keep in mind that not all states are suitablefor such sustained winds). Boy, cutting down all those trees is gonna anger alot of green-loving tree-huggers.

Let'stalk about disposal now. The lifespan of a modern, top quality,highly efficient wind turbine is 20 years.
Afterthat, then what? What happens to those gigantic fiber compositeblades? They cannot economically be reused, refurbished, reduced,repurposed, or recycled so guess what..? It's off to special landfills they go.

And guesswhat else..? They're already running out of these special landfill spaces for theblades that have already exceeded their usefulness. Seriously! Those blades areanywhere from 120 ft. to over 200 ft. long and there are 3 per turbine. Andthat's with only 7% of the nation currently being supplied with wind energy.Just imagine if we had the other 93% of the nation on the wind grid... 20 yearsfrom now you'd have all those unusable blades with no place to put them... Then20 A years after that, and 20 years after that, and so on.

Gollygee, how green is that?

Oops, Ialmost forgot about the 500,000 birds that are killed each year from windturbine blade collisions; most of which are endangered hawks, falcons, owls,geese, ducks, and eagles. Apparently smaller birds are more agile andable to dart and dodge out of the way of the spinning blades, whereas thelarger soaring birds aren't so lucky.

I'm surethe wildlife conservationist folks are just ecstatic about that.

I'm soglad the wind energy people are looking out for the world. Thank You JohnKerry. And this doesn’t take into account the need for each turbine to operateat 75% efficiency for a minimum of 60 years just to off-set the co2 emissionscreated in its manufacture; but hang on, each turbine only has a lifeexpectancy of 20 years . . . oops!!!

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Hey pints

Yes, always good to put some thought into sustainability issues.

For context, I believe 85% of the materials going into the construction of wind turbines can actually be recycled today... though not the blades.

Landfill certainly is not a sustainable long-term solution...as my uncle Freddy - who is blind - knows.

As more and more turbines reach the end of their lives, you will find that this will receive more and more attention. Already some large companies are looking at ways to recycle the large blades:

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/ge-announces-first-us-wind-turbine-blade-recycling-program-with-veolia/591869/

According to the article:

"... Almost 90% of the blade material, primarily fiberglass, will be repurposed for cement production, shredded at Veolia's processing facility in Missouri and used at manufacturing facilities across the country.

"Last summer we completed a trial using a GE blade, and we were very happy with the results. This fall we have processed more than 100 blades so far, and our customers have been very pleased with the product," Cappadona said in a statement."... "

Of course then there is NREL, who have developed a recyclable blade:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-wind-turbine-blades-could-be-recycled-instead-of-landfilled/

They are just testing to see if it will last 30 years.

I note the comment:

“I think that a lot of progress is going to be made on the recyclability of blades in the next year or two,” Laird said.

Not everyone is that optimistic. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) recently released a paper suggesting that “repurposing” giant used blades might be a simpler alternative to recycling. The industry group says that “local communities” might use them for pedestrian bridges, playground equipment and public benches. Roofing materials is another potential use.

The AWEA report quoted Cindie Langston, manager of the solid waste division for Casper, Wyo., who was recently thrilled to receive $600,000 for dumping used wind turbine blades in the local landfill.

“This is the least problematic waste in terms of environmental concerns that we’ve ever gotten,” she explained to AWEA. “We get tires, asbestos, contaminated soil, pretty nasty stuff.”

AWEA’s report also noted that Vestas Wind Systems A/S, one of the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturers, has set a goal for eliminating conventional turbine blades by 2040."

You can read about Vestas' plans here:

https://www.vestas.com/en/media/blog/sustainability/20200511_zero-waste-turbines#!

That is the thing. Unlike with the fossil fuel energy sector and ICE cars, the very raison d'être for renewable energy is to achieve sustainability. Hence, every little step towards improved sustainability with renewable energy and EVs is locked in and can be improved upon, while with fossil fuels and ICE cars, no matter how much more efficient they become... they will forever burn dirty fossil fuels.

So it is good to see that you are finally beginning to think about sustainability of renewable energy pints. We need more people like you!!!