Wind energy blows, rotors are not recyclable so they just get buried. nuclear energy is the greenest energy, as long as they are built in safe places.
More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source
101–110 of 166 posts
Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source
#102False and misleading. First, it only refers to the US, while the headline makes no such qualification. Second, this refers only to electricity generation, which is roughly 25% of US energy use, or 20% if you include energy embedded in imports, mostly fueled by fossil fuels in China. Third, this refers only to gros capacity. For those who have been asleep, the effective energy capacity is far lower for renewables than…
>First, it only refers to the US, while the headline makes no such qualification.
The url gives you a good hint.
Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source
#103Best news is that cost of these installations is now quite low: less than $1.5 per watt peak. What about capacity utilisation factor of newly installed turbines? Does it trend downwards? Which means, are we close to exhausting potential of wind? PS: It's not, it's actually trending a bit up. Which is explainable because average capacity of a turbine trends up -> the turbine is bigger and taller -> wind blows faster a…
Also, how useful is peak wind power? Often is it not peak?
It depends on the region obviously, but often peak wind power is in mornings and evenings, which complements solar nicely.
Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
No it's a typical "this alternative is better even though it is not a panacea" argument. Nobody argues that it's good that wind turbines produce waste. It's just that the problems caused by wind turbine waste are absolutely trivial compared to climate change.
Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source
#105False and misleading. First, it only refers to the US, while the headline makes no such qualification. Second, this refers only to electricity generation, which is roughly 25% of US energy use, or 20% if you include energy embedded in imports, mostly fueled by fossil fuels in China. Third, this refers only to gros capacity. For those who have been asleep, the effective energy capacity is far lower for renewables than…
>First, it only refers to the US, while the headline makes no such qualification. The url gives you a good hint.
How does that help on mobile where I don't see the URL by default. The headline should specify US if it's only for US.
Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source
#106Is there a plan to eliminate coal and gas as big elements in USA's eletricity production?
If Form Energy (or Ambri or other sub 50$/khw battery system) succeeds, gas and coal are done. Even combined cycle LNG can’t compete with wind/solar + multi day storage on cost. If it looks like one of the major grid scale battery projects will work, gas plant financiers will not risk new projects as their assets will get stranded before they pay off.
Battery storage can, and most likely will, be the solution for day-night fluctuations in energy use. However, for the amounts of energy that seasonal energy storage would require, it's not really a viable solution.
Regarding clean seasonal energy storage - UK, French and German authorities all independently came with studies(1) that arrived to the same conclusion - synthetic methane is the only viable option. Very expensive, but the engineering is doable. Gas plants are here to stay.
(1) https://english.bdi.eu/media/presse/presse/downloads/2018030...
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC1...
Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source
#107How much fossil fuel consumption was reduced as a result?
In the US, there was more coal power generation in 2021 than 2020 because 2020 was an abormally low year of power consumption. If we skip over the pandemic, there was less electricty generated from coal in 2021 than 2019. Coal in the US has been in long-term decline since around 2008. Natural gas seems to be holding fairly stable at the moment. Depending on source, it looks like the US retired some 9 to 11 GW of coal…
China is producing all of the "super affordable" solar panels that everyone else are importing. All of that solar panel manufacturing requires coal.
Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
France runs mostly on nuclear, producing less carbon and more energy for less money than Germany which tried (and failed) to move its grid to solar and wind
France does run mostly on nuclear, but the less money claim needs some serious evidence. The reason why France can export energy more cheaply is because the cost of nuclear is pretty much all capex, so now that they have their plants it makes sense to constantly (nuclear plants can't easily be adjusted to load) run them at a high output and export excess energy. However, the overall cost is very likely much higher (t…
Aren't renewables heavily subsidised?
Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Solar is indeed long term cheaper to install but subject to periodic down-time. Wind blows at night and when it is cloudy. Also the nature of our atmosphere is that there is always some wind somewhere. So, they are complementary. Right now everybody is focused on getting to 100% carbon neutral. However, the question must be asked: why stop there and not go to something like 500 or even 1000% energy generation. There…
Once we've gotten to 100% renewable energy, Excess that isn't sopped up mining bitcoin (I'm probably joking), would best used to reduce the price of things like smelting metals, running heavy industry, and recycling plastics or even better trying to clean the carbon from air.
I think 100% in general is a vague notion. 100% of what? Current demand would be mostly excluding things that in the future would be included. Things like heating houses (mostly gas currently in a lot of countries). Or powering the things you mention. Or creating vast amounts of hydrogen. Or powering most forms of road transport. All of those things are starting to happen.
Carbon neutrality involves most of those things happening on a very large scale. Our current electricity demand is a small portion of that overall future demand.
Re: More wind energy was installed in 2020 than any other energy source
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Have you missed the underground part? Ideally both reservoirs would be kept underground, thus minimizing environmental impact and water loss to an absolute minimum.
I agree that such storage would require huge CapEx, but on the bright side OpEx will be relatively small. And no need to bother with recycling of megatonnes of batteries every decade. Also because stored energy is proportional to volume and height difference you it's possible scale such storage quite flexibly (assuming an affordable technology for creating such cavities will be developed).