Wind – No Problem Legacy For Future Generations
May 14, 2012 | 
Author Another turbophobic myth dispelled
When I started this blog fifteen months ago I had no intention of championing Big Wind, an entity very likely to be every bit as self-seeking and environmentally slapdash as Big Oil or Big Nuclear. However, I do feel compelled to devote a few electrons every now and then to refuting some of the more ridiculous arguments deployed against wind turbines by those who seek to couch their narrow and temporary self-interest in terms of the greater good.
When not fantasising about ‘bird mincers’ turbophobes may resort to the fanciful argument that wind turbines will become permanent eyesores when their working life is over. ‘We are saving the countryside for our children’ they say. They will triumphantly post pictures they have googled up of a handful of rusting turbines on Hawaii, proclaiming that this is the legacy we are leaving for future generations.
Of course, like most anti-wind rhetoric this argument does not bear close examination. Decomissioning arrangements are built into every planning approval , as they are with other large developments. Usually windfarm developers are required to put in place a bond to cover the cost of decommissioning in the event of the owner going bust. The actual dismantling of the towers is not technically challenging, and of course the metal can be recycled. Access roads may take some time to grow over, but not as long as slag heaps, mine tailings or quarries.
The blades of a typical 2-megawatt turbine weight 42 tonnes. So if we take a 500MW windfarm that means that at the end of (say) 20 years we will have 10,500 tonnes of difficult to recycle but inert and harmless material. This represents 1050 tonnes per year. I find this slightly less alarming than, eg, the waste created by a typical 500-megawatt coal plant, which includes more than 125,000 tons of ash and 193,000 tons of sludge from the smokestack scrubber each year.
I don’t think wind is an ideal technology, but it is the only affordable low-carbon electricity generation technology that is currently deployable at scale. And of all the arguments stacked up against it this one – ‘We are preserving the landscape for future generations’ - is the one that rings most hollow. In twenty or thirty years I belive our children and grandchildren are more likely to bemoan our lack of appetite to tackle climate change than they are the existence of a few thousand metal towers and plastic blades that are no longer needed.
Posted in Onshore Wind
I think what my Grandchildren will bemoan in 30yrs time is the fact fact that we have have subsidised a handful of companies and already wealthy individuals to the tune of at least 150,000,000,000 Pounds to finance an absolutely useless way to generate electricity and it having zero effect on climate change as long as the Chinese (and Germans) continue to build coal fired power stations at one a week.
China is the biggest user of wind-generated electricity in the world.
At the end of 2011, wind power in the People’s Republic of China accounted for 62 gigawatts (GW) of electricity generating capacity, and the country aims to have 100 gigawatts (GW) of on-grid wind power generating capacity by the end of 2015 and to generate 190 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of wind power annually.
Doing nothing because it will take a while for China to stabilise its emissions is a cop-out. The truth is that the bulk of the anthropogenic CO2 currently in the atmosphere was put there by us, not China.
(A study by researchers at Berkeley Lab suggests that China’s energy consumption is set to stabilise well before the middle of the century)
And . . . it would seem that we are partly responsible for the situation in China. According a recent report energy and climate change committee our own consumption in the UK of goods such as TVs and mobile phones made in China has “outsourced” the UK’s greenhouse-gas emissions, and is leading to a net increase in global emissions.
In 2011 China generated 4500TWh of electricity.
This is 4500 x 10 to the power of 12. Or in numbers 4500,000,000,000,000KWh (source China.org)
Wind generation (your figures) in China was 190,000,000,000 ………. a tiny fraction of total consumption.
According to Energy Information Administration, International Energy Outlook 2009 .
By 2030 the Chinese electric generation will be as follows…..
Coal 75%
Hydro 13%
Nuclear 5%
WIND 4%
Natural Gas 2%
Oil 1%
These figures could change however and it looks like the Chinese are going big time for Thorium Nuclear generation and shale gas whilst dumping Wind and Solar…. they’re not daft!
Scotland produces 0.1% of the world’s carbon footprint yet we seem to be determined to become the most expensive electricity consummers in the planet with the fantasy of 100% renewable by 2020. Can someone please talk to FM Haggis Salmond and explain to him in simple terms what is possible. for example we need Baseload which wind power cannot by any strength of the imagination deliver and back up for intermittancy.
I note that you feel the people of Scotland should suffer fuel poverty (900,000 already do) and should be prepared to pay a lot more for goods to punish them for past indiscretions with regards to carbon emmissions so as to allow the Chinese to dominate the markets until the middle of the century while being allowed to completly disregard their contribution to increased Anthropogenic CO2.
My Grandchildren will be SO Pleased.
Fuel poverty in Scotland is caused by poor housing, increasing gas prices and the general rapacity of the energy comnpanies. In January 2011 Ofgem’s estimated element the average electricity bill that was accounted for by the Renewables Obligation was just £16. Claims that the RO is primarily or even substantially responsible for fuel poverty are simply untrue.
Your China figures appear to be plucked out of thin air and conflict grotesquely with other sources such as this report China can build ‘green economy’ by 2030 which predicts China will only be generating 34% of its electricity from coal in 2030. Somewhat different from the 75% you allude to.
We are now well off-topic however, so I have to ask you to please confine any further comments to the subject matter of the article – wind farm decomissioning and recycling – if you do not want them removed for being off-topic.
Kid’s seem to be having plenty of fun…good on them, but why build an article out of such a trivial point.
When I was a kid we played on a decommissioned shunting engine.
A more interesting article would have been why decommission the 12 turbines in schools in Argyll…on safety grounds.
or the release of the Tiree Array photographs by SPR…
So much rhetoric…so little content.
Karl
Karl,
What is content-free is the assertion by turbophobic NIMBYs that they are doing what they do ‘for the children’ when in most cases they are primarily doing it for their house prices. The article was written to show that wind turbines are no future threat to our childrens’ environment, easily removed harmless waste. Sorry you found it trivial, it was written to counter what I regard as a trivial argument, but an argument that is regularly reiterated by opponents of wind.
I don’t have any new information on why the 12 turbines at Argyll schools have been shut down – as I understand it they are not being ‘decomissioned’, they are being shut down while an investigation is carried out. :Highland Council temporarily suspended the operations after receiving feedback from an independent organisation it hired to evaluate installations on or adjacent to school sites in the area.. It is possible that they will recommend that barriers or exclusion zones are put up round the turbines before they resume operation, but not because of any actual accident or incident.
Re. SPR and the Argyll Array – I am always happy to publish a guest article on the subject should you care to provide one.
Thanks webcraft: Decommisioning will take place at sometime…and seriously, like yourself I think it is not a major discussion point…I may have gone off at a slight tangent….something we are all guilty of.
In relation to the photo…I am sure the kids on Tiree would welcome this sort of set up…any kids for that matter…
In relation to the school turbines…my mistake…they have been shut down on safety grounds incase a part should become come loose during operation…it’s a design and a HSE matter. We had 3 turbines self destruct on Tiree in the December storms. So when I get one for my house I will have to look carefully at this issue.
As for the Tiree Array…you know my feelings.
Later Karl