13 point response to anti-wind claims (Frank Fera)

[Dardedar]

1) “Each wind turbine needs 80 gallons of oil as lubricant…”

Even if that was true, and it isn’t, it wouldn’t matter. It doesn’t burn oil or carbon, to make electricity. The filthy competition does.
We need oil for lots of useful things. Roads, fertilizers, plastics and lubricating the wheels on my EV.
The wrong thing to do with oil is burn it. Because then it's gone and you’ve polluted your air and you've used a precious commodity for something (heat or electricity) that could have been done much better and vastly more efficiently with renewables.
That all electricity generators use oil whether they be nuke, coal, oil or gas, is not a reason to not have electricity generators.
A common older 1.5 MW wind turbine uses 35 gallons of oil, all of which is reclaimed and repurposed and then it produces 100,000 MWH during its twenty-year service life, avoiding burning 58,000 tons of coal.
Most wind turbines made today use direct-drive generators, there is no longer a gearbox, and most fittings are now permanently lubricated.
Compare this with 240,000 *tons* of toxic ash each coal plant makes annually with its waste going out in the elements, seeping heavy metals into their aquifers, poisoning ground water everywhere they operate.

2) “estimated that a little over 3,800 turbines would be needed to power a city the size of New York...“

NYC uses about 50 TWh per year.
https://www.buildingcongress.com/advoca ... -2027.html

The new Haliade-X 14 MW offshore turbine being installed now on the east coast, can generate up to 74 GWh of gross annual energy production. That’s 675 turbines to cover the approximate total gross electricity usage of NYC.
https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind ... re-turbine

3) “the large equipment needed to build these wind farms run on petroleum.”

More and more they will not. These systems will be going electric as well (examples upon request). Not that it matters, the energy and carbon used to build, transport, maintain and decommission turbines is paid back in less than a year and about four dozen times over.
--
Comparative life cycle assessment of 2.0 MW wind turbines
“The work presented examines life cycle environmental impacts of two 2.0 MW wind turbines. Manufacturing, transport, installation, maintenance, and end of life have been considered for both models and are compared using the ReCiPe 2008 impact assessment method. In addition, energy payback analysis was conducted based on the cumulative energy demand and the energy produced by the wind turbines over 20 years. Life cycle assessment revealed that environmental impacts are concentrated in the manufacturing stage, which accounts for 78% of impacts. The energy payback period for the two turbine models are found to be 5.2 and 6.4 months, respectively.”
https://www.inderscienceonline.com/doi/ ... 014.062496?

4) And just exactly how eco-friendly is wind energy anyway?

Incredibly eco-friendly. 90x cleaner than coal is a tremendous improvement.
“…wind power’s carbon footprint is among the smallest of any energy source.
Coal’s carbon footprint is almost 90 times larger than that of wind energy, and the footprint of natural gas is more than 40 times larger, according to the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.” https://www.factcheck.org/2018/03/wind- ... footprint/
The energy return on investment for wind (EROI) is about 1:44. One unit used, 44 paid back.
Oil used to be that, now it’s down to about 1:8. Because we’ve already extracted the easy stuff.

5) “Each turbine requires a footprint of 1.5 acres… to power a city the size of NYC you'd need 57,000 acres”

Actually, more like a two-car garage (or half an acre), but to be fair, there is some land use for access roads. That doesn’t apply to offshore turbines. NYC is on the east coast, where they have vast offshore wind resources to tap. When you put a turbine offshore, as New York is doing right now, it uses zero acres of land.
--
Offshore wind on track to hit or exceed Biden's 30 GW target by 2030
-The U.S. is now on track to deploy at least 30 GW of offshore wind generation by 2030
-New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts have pledged to procure more than 45 GW of offshore wind by 2040, and 17.5 GW of wind projects have already secured financing and offtake pathways
-The 30 GW benchmark, once considered ambitious, now looks to be the "tip of the iceberg" as the offshore industry prepares for rapid expansion.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/offsho ... 30/619002/?

6) “who knows the astronomical amount of land you would need to power the entire US.”

Since wind goes so nicely with farmland, it’s not bad at all. For instance, for actual footprint (before proper spacing):
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A Wind Turbine Farm The Size Of Delaware Could Power The Entire United States
“…each wind turbine only takes up about a quarter acre of land at the base, so that’s only about 470 square miles of land that would actually have a wind turbine on it. The US is about 3.8 million square miles, so that’s only about 0.01% of the land mass. I think the US could afford that much. After all, it’s only a little bigger than Delaware.”
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/07/27/wi ... er-the-us/

Delaware is 1,943 times smaller than United States.
Delaware is 0.05% of the landmass of United States.
a) Kansas alone has enough wind to tap to power ¾ of the entire US.
b) Texas has enough wind to power the entire US 1.4x over. Or Texas 15x over
c) US offshore wind alone could power the nation twice.
d) Offshore wind worldwide could power the world 18x over.
We have more wind and solar to tap than we could ever use.
Reference for each claim (a-d) upon request.

7) “lifespan of a modern, top quality, highly efficient wind turbine is 20 years.”

Turbines are now designed to last 25-30 years on purpose. They could make them last longer but after that period of time, the main pitch bearings are pretty worn out and after 25-30 years the new tech is so vastly better and cheaper it makes sense to upgrade to the new technology rather than overhaul and refurbish. Like this:
"East of San Francisco, one of the country’s oldest wind farms has produced power for more than 30 years.
There, almost 1,500 old turbines were taken down in recent years. Only 82 new ones were installed in their place, but they produce about the same amount of electricity."
Meaning, the new turbines are 18x more powerful than the ones they are replacing. That's a lot.
And now we have ones that are 50x more powerful than that on the way. Like the Haliade mentioned earlier.
Also note, thermal plants such as coal, gas and nuke also get regular expensive upgrades and refurbishment about every 20-30 years as well. After 30-50 years it often doesn’t make sense to refurbish coal or nuclear plants, and they are shut down.

This 10 minute video by a wind engineer explains why it makes sense that turbines are designed to last 20-30 years on purpose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfquMx9h98M

8] “turbine blades… cannot economically be reused, refurbished, reduced, repurposed, or recycled”

Except, that’s exactly what happens to them. Four examples.
a) Global Fiberglass Solutions plans to turn retired turbine blades into pellets for use in flooring, furniture and more.
https://energynews.us/2020/02/20/midwes ... a-factory/?

b) Decommissioned wind turbine blades used for cement co-processing
An initiative to recycle wind turbine blades includes the use of recycled glass fiber composites for cement manufacturing, replacing raw material and saving energy.
https://www.compositesworld.com/blog/po ... processing?

c) Global Fiberglass Solutions offers pioneering fiberglass recycling and green-product manufacturing.
We help wind energy and other industries avoid landfills, build customer trust, and achieve true sustainability. https://www.globalfiberglassinc.com/?

d) Blade recycling: Top priority for the wind industry
Vestas announced its plans for zero-waste turbines. 14k wind turbine blades will be decommissioned in Europe next 5 years. The recycling of these old blades is a top priority for the wind industry."
https://windeurope.org/newsroom/news/bl ... -industry/?

9) “It's off to special landfills they go.”

In the past some of them were landfilled, not that it matters. It’s still 90 times cleaner than burning coal, and creates 1/200th the volume of waste as toxic coal does. We could set them on fire and it would be vasty better than burning coal to make electricity. And being non-toxic inert fiberglass, they are actually desired by landfills.
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WIND TURBINE BLADES WILL GENERATE ABOUT $675,000 AT CASPER LANDFILL
“Our special waste projects generate on average $800,000 in revenue per year to make it possible to keep our rates low.”
The blades are being stored in unlined construction and demolition cell space, since fiberglass is “one of the most inert (non-toxic)” materials disposed of at the landfill.
90% of wind turbine material is recyclable, according to Langston. Only the blades and the motor housing are non-recyclable because they are made from fiberglass.”
https://oilcity.news/general/2019/08/01 ... ll-photos/?


10) “with only 7% of the nation currently being supplied with wind energy.”

That was true a few years ago, but the growth is taking off. It’ll be about 11% this year (coal and nuclear are about 19% each). Wind power passed hydro in the US two years ago. It even passed coal and nuclear for a day in March.
The US needs about 9 TWh per day.
Here’s March 29, 2022. Wind power came in 2nd place.
TWh produced by each source
Gas 3.27
Wind: 2.01
Nuclear: 1.98
Coal: 1.81
Hydro: .82
Solar: .31
https://twitter.com/EIAgov/status/1511418822569435147?

The growth is phenomenal: “The wind power sector installed 93 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity in 2020, a record figure which represents a year-on-year jump of more than 50%. Over the last decade, the global wind power market has almost quadrupled.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/16/a-quant ... igger.html?

11) “Just imagine if we had the other 93% of the nation on the wind grid...”

We don’t need wind to do 100%, but it will be an important portion going forward as the dirty sources get pushed out. Wind power alone will likely catch and surpass coal, and nuclear, this decade. That’s a big deal. It’s already providing more than 50% in some states.
October 2021 here are the Top 10 Wind as Electricity Source by States, and percentage for each:
SD - 63.7%
IA - 56.2%
KS - 49.3%
OK - 45.7%
ND - 40.9%
NM - 33.7%
CO - 30.2%
NB - 26.3%
MN - 22.9%
TX - 22.7%
Percentage for US - 10.1%
https://www.chooseenergy.com/data-cente ... -by-state/?

12) “20 years from now you'd have all those unusable blades with no place to put them...”

Since we already deal with the 200x greater volume of waste, all of it toxic, that coal generates, dealing with a vastly smaller volume of non-toxic waste won’t be a problem.
Let’s put it in context:
If you get all of your household electricity from wind energy, over 20 years your contribution of (now recyclable) wind turbine blade waste would be 33lbs.
If you get it from a coal fired power plant that much waste is generated every 40 days.
That’s TWO HUNDRED TIMES more.
You personally generate that much waste municipal every 7 days. Over 20 years that’s 1,000 times the volume of waste as from wind power.
This is all explained here:
https://medium.com/climate-conscious/wi ... 61913dcbd9

13) “Oops, I almost forgot about the 500,000 birds that are killed…”

Yes, you wouldn’t want to forget the bird canard and that made-up number. Realize that whatever the number is, it’s likely considerably less than the number of birds that are *saved* per year by wind power avoiding burning fossil fuels.
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Want to save 70 million birds a year? Build more wind farms
“replacing all fossil fuel generation with wind turbines world-wide would save roughly 70 MILLION birds’ lives annually. Wind energy is actually the form of generation with the lowest impact on wildlife. Wind farms kill less than 0.0001 per cent of birds killed by human actions annually, and perhaps 0.00000075 per cent of birds on the planet annually.
Wind farms are a strong net benefit for bird populations, and their direct impacts on bird populations are so insignificant that they can’t be considered a problem compared to the advantages.”
https://reneweconomy.com.au/want-to-sav ... rms-18274/?

Danish research shows “almost no birds” die in collisions with wind turbines
“…in the first year of investigation, a total of 17 dead birds were found under the 11 selected wind turbines. In the third year, 22 dead birds or their remains were found.
“The area is an important natural area and quite extraordinary, as 20-30,000 pink-footed geese and several hundred cranes roost here,”
https://reneweconomy.com.au/danish-rese ... -turbines-