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More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

energy.gov

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Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#81

Post by fy20 »

asien wrote: post #24

What I’m more worry about those Renewables stuff is their ressource footprint , when you look at how much « rare earth » « composite » material is needed to build just one its seems like a nonsense to use wind their are many documentaries on this topic. Today the vast majority of those turbines are not recycled. On top of that wind being intermittent you need gas power plant to provide. France power provider RTE esti…

Wind turbines take less than a year to become CO2 neutral - generating enough electricity to offset the embodied CO2 used to produce, transport and construct the turbine.

https://www.newscientist.com/lastword/mg24332461-400-what-is...

This will likely go down over time though, as steel and concrete (which are both very much recyclable today) are big parts of wind turbines so as those become "greener" so will the wind turbines.

Yes the blades are not currently recycled, but like most things, this is because it's cheaper to produce new than to recycle. If it became economically viable or government's mandated it, then it would happen. There are already some processes to recycle glass fibre composites:

https://www.materialstoday.com/carbon-fiber/features/recycli...

Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#82

Post by asien »

eutectic wrote: post #73
asien wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is today no industrial bother recycling them , it’s just cheaper to buy new material. Those 85% are actually 15% in effective.

Surely copper at least is worth recycling?

The materials are indeed worth recycling but the process is just too expensive and complicated.

Best examples would be devices like phones/microwave/tv they contain lots of those rare materials.

Industrial simply prefer to sell junks for cheap in bulk to the African continent where very poor people burn those junks to extract the rare minerals.

It’s not as simple as « 100% recyclable = Always Recycled »

Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#84

Post by stephen_g »

techpression wrote: post #49
creato wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today the vast majority of those turbines are not recycled. I really doubt this is true in any meaningful sense. First of all, I'd expect the majority of all turbines ever produced to still be in their useful service life. Second, many of the materials are valuable as scrap. It would be blatantly idiotic to just destroy and bury these materials, even if your goal is to spite environmentalists. Third, even the unsub…

You would be very wrong unfortunately. There’s currently no way to recycle or reuse the blades and it’s a big problem that nobody seems to care about. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turb... “Companies are searching for ways to deal with the tens of thousands of blades that have reached the end of their lives.” In Sweden we are making wind power company owners very rich with heavily subsidies,…

I feel like your argument is the kind that sounds sort of intuitive in isolation, but is nonsensical in context.

How much of the inputs into fossil fuel generators are recycled? Massively more coal, gas, oil etc. is consumed than the amount of wind turbine blades that will go to landfill. Then there’s the byproducts - in Australia, coal ash is literally 22% of all waste generated across the whole country per year. It just goes to landfill!

Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#85

Post by techpression »

stephen_g wrote: post #84
techpression wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would be very wrong unfortunately. There’s currently no way to recycle or reuse the blades and it’s a big problem that nobody seems to care about. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turb... “Companies are searching for ways to deal with the tens of thousands of blades that have reached the end of their lives.” In Sweden we are making wind power company owners very rich with heavily subsidies,…

I feel like your argument is the kind that sounds sort of intuitive in isolation, but is nonsensical in context. How much of the inputs into fossil fuel generators are recycled? Massively more coal, gas, oil etc. is consumed than the amount of wind turbine blades that will go to landfill. Then there’s the byproducts - in Australia, coal ash is literally 22% of all waste generated across the whole country per year. It…

That is the typical “two wrongs make a right” argument, fossil fuels being bad makes it ok for wind turbines to generate land fill too.l And I answered a statement about recycling of turbines, nothing more.

Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#86

Post by sofixa »

fuoqi wrote: post #55
fulafel wrote: post #4

Is there a plan to eliminate coal and gas as big elements in USA's eletricity production?

I think that natural gas plants will be a significant part of power grids for a long time. Maybe they will not be primary generators, but they certainly will stay as backup. At the very least until the grid-scale storage problem will be properly solved (i.e. you need to store at least several days of consumption, ideally several weeks). I don't think that any kind of chemical batteries is the solution to this problem…

> Personally, I hope that hydro pumped storage in artificial underground cavities will become mainstream one day.

That would have massive (environmental and financial) costs.

https://youtu.be/JSgd-QhLHRI

Is a great video discussing the practicality and finances involved in hydro pumped storage.

Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#87

Post by techpression »

hannob wrote: post #77
techpression wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would be very wrong unfortunately. There’s currently no way to recycle or reuse the blades and it’s a big problem that nobody seems to care about. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turb... “Companies are searching for ways to deal with the tens of thousands of blades that have reached the end of their lives.” In Sweden we are making wind power company owners very rich with heavily subsidies,…

> There’s currently no way to recycle or reuse the blades and it’s a big problem that nobody seems to care about The wind power industry cares and is actively asking for political incentives to change this: https://windeurope.org/newsroom/press-releases/wind-industry...

The industry needs political incentives to even exist and now they want incentives to fix the problem the incentives created. Why don’t we just agree on state financed and owned wind power and be done with it instead of feeding the middlemen.

And it begs the question, the waste was a known factor before even starting building turbines, why start asking for this now instead of twenty years ago. To me it feels very much like a problem once wanted to be swept under the rug now becoming too much to handle.

Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#88

Post by jokoon »

seibelj wrote: post #5
fulafel wrote: post #4

Is there a plan to eliminate coal and gas as big elements in USA's eletricity production?

If it’s cloudy and an extended period of calm wind, it’s unacceptable for me to not have electricity, and neither is it for hospitals or nursing homes. We will always need some form of petro backup unless our queasiness with nuclear is solved.

I don't know why you're being downvoted, because you're right.

Nuclear is the good solution, not renewables.

Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source

#90

Post by joe-collins »

antupis wrote: post #13
fulafel wrote: post #4

Is there a plan to eliminate coal and gas as big elements in USA's eletricity production?

I think you guys need gas as peak power long time but coal is now in borrowed time. At least Germany is started moving towards power to hydrogen but it takes like 10+ years to build truly big industrial scale production for P2H. Same for grid scale batteries eg which are moving right direction but not there yet.

Even gas might dwindle faster than you'd think.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/01/new-study-a-zero-emi...

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