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Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

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71–80 of 182 posts

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#71
post #58

This is nuts. I wonder what the effect of spending $1T on nuclear would be in comparison. I bet it's enough money to get to practical nuclear fusion in a decade, which would largely obviate the need in most other energy generation methods.

Looks like a single fission plant costs around 6 to 9 billion and construction costs tend to go up. There's not a lot of room for iteration and learning from experience; you have to get it right the first time.

Compare that with a competitive industry that's manufacturing in bulk and improving every year. Where do the lines cross?

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#72
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.audubon.org/news/will-wind-turbines-ever-be-safe... Hundreds of thousands, apparently

For comparison, cats kill between 1.4 billion and 3.7 billion birds a year ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/outdo... )

Right, and wind constitutes less than 5% of total energy production. I'm not anti-wind, but we can't pretend massive growth in wind production will have no impact.

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#73
post #39
post #27

So disappointing journalists never understand the difference between power and energy. The opening sentences make me cringe so much I don't even want to read the rest of the article > Last month the American wind industry hit a major milestone — 100 gigawatts of total installed capacity. That's enough electricity to power the state of California and New Jersey combined for one year.

What is wrong with that sentence? As of 2018 there was ~98k MW of installed wind capacity [1]. Reaching 100 GW of installed capacity in 2019 make perfect sense. It seems like it's you that doesn't understand the difference between power (watts) vs. energy (watt-hours / joules) yet are confident enough to call a journalist out even though they are correct. [1]( https://gwec.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/GWEC-Global-W…

I guess you've read "for one year" as "in one year", but that's not what "for" means, and anyway, I'm sure it took a lot more than a year to install 100GW worth of turbines.

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#74
post #22

How many birds is it worth sacrificing to build huge wind turbine farms instead of compact nuclear reactors? Is the worst case of a Chernobyl or Fukushima worse than the expected case from square miles of spinning blades?

You've got to be incredibly concerned about feral domesticated cats and window collisions, which kill 1,000-10,000 times more birds annually (on the upper end between the two orders of magnitude) between them.

A common argument; Michael Schellenberger addresses it here:

https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shellenberger_why_renewabl...

Basically, cats kills sparrows and other small and extremely prolific urban birds. Those birds aren't what wind turbines threaten. Wind turbines threaten larger prey birds like owls, eagles, falcons, etc.

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#75
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have some sources? All windfarms I know of are designed for at least 25 years. Not many have reached that age yet, so if they last is yet to be seen. The first offshore wind farm Vindeby was decommissioned in 2016 (after 25 years) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindeby_Offshore_Wind_Farm In 2015 Yttre Stengrund ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yttre_Stengrund_offshore_wind_... ) was decommissioned after only 14…

Here you go[1]. 12-15 years [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/windpower/9770...

Trouble is, the "Renewable Energy Foundation" is really an anti-wind farm lobbying group set up by Noel Edmonds. Presumably a NIMBY reaction to some plan for a wind farm near wherever he lives. I'll need some validation of any "study" from them.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2011/may/18/ren...

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#76
post #15

By far the most wind turbines have been built on land and for good reason: it's much cheaper. As long as there is space/not too many people complaining it makes more sense to build on land. Not sure exactly but on land installed wind is probably ~10x the installed capacity offshore. However on land turbines are pretty much maxed out at about 7,5MW, due to logistical difficulties of getting larger blades, towers and n…

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Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#77
post #53

Will wind turbines accelerate climate change? edit: during its exploitation I was involved in design of Wind Farms and they affect wind directions at least locally. Naturally, they change climate locally. The question is how local is not global enough.

Interesting question, seems it's still open but has been found worthy of study. There are probably research groups working on it right now. Review paper (2015): 'Impact of wind-energy generation on climate: A rising spectre' https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136403211... 'Potential climatic impacts and reliability of very large-scale windfarms' https://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16115.short#sec-2 'P…

Hero, thanks. We teach a module on renewable energy at my uni and it's interesting to get the big picture perspective on the use of wind turbines.

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#78
post #15

By far the most wind turbines have been built on land and for good reason: it's much cheaper. As long as there is space/not too many people complaining it makes more sense to build on land. Not sure exactly but on land installed wind is probably ~10x the installed capacity offshore. However on land turbines are pretty much maxed out at about 7,5MW, due to logistical difficulties of getting larger blades, towers and n…

Transmission!!! A huge appeal of offshore for densely populated areas is you can put the huge turbines far off the coast of a dense area and then have very effective transmission, something which onshore is vastly limited by due to NIMBYism and lobbying and regulation.

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was my impression that the main reason for building offshore is because the winds are much more steady there. The definition of trade wind is a "permanent prevailing wind"; building someplace with "permanent" winds sounds like a good idea to me.

Yes. Land based ones are often on plains or ridges. Steady and unimpeded wind is why aerial and offshore have better EROI.

Do land-based ones compete with agricultural usage?

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#80
post #15

By far the most wind turbines have been built on land and for good reason: it's much cheaper. As long as there is space/not too many people complaining it makes more sense to build on land. Not sure exactly but on land installed wind is probably ~10x the installed capacity offshore. However on land turbines are pretty much maxed out at about 7,5MW, due to logistical difficulties of getting larger blades, towers and n…

It was my impression that the main reason for building offshore is because the winds are much more steady there. The definition of trade wind is a "permanent prevailing wind"; building someplace with "permanent" winds sounds like a good idea to me.

Offshore siting also allows for much larger wind turbines, which are needed to economically exploit the higher quality winds given the extra expense of offshore construction and maintenance.

Onshore turbines are size constrained by transportation limits. Waters-edge construction and transport by sea allows for larger elements.

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