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How Not to Save the Planet
Several times a month when I’m driving south on Interstate 35 to go to work, I see something like this plodding along in the other direction:
By Alexi Kostibas from Anywhere – Windmill Blade on I-35, CC BY-SA 2.0.
That is a single blade for our primary renewable energy generator: Windmills. What is not shown are the other two blades in the caravan or the escort trucks that each one of these huge, highly specialized carriers has to have. Nor does it show the hundreds of angry commuters who are being held up by these lumbering behemoths. When the parts of the windmill arrive at their destination, the device is assembled using cranes and other heavy machinery. The windmills also have to be inspected and maintained by guys in trucks driving to each generator. Notice what all of these steps have in common? That’s right, folks, each requires a large machine that runs on fossil fuel and spits CO2 into the air.
There are other things that are not so obvious that have an environmental impact. The reason for the guys in the truck is that wind farms are several hundred times larger in area than natural gas-, oil-, or, gasp, coal-fired generating plants. This means you several hundred more miles of transmission lines within the farm. Wind farms also tend to be a long way from cities since most urban areas have a chronic shortage of empty, wind-swept plains and ridges. Every extra mile that you send electricity through transmission lines means that some of the energy is being lost. This “lost” energy isn’t turned into pixie dust or fairy tears, it’s converted to heat. I know “Global Warming” isn’t a thing anymore since the Earth inconsiderately didn’t warm in a way that matched the models. Still, I thought the whole point of “renewable” energy was to not release more heat into the environment.
Finally, no one ever considers the birth or death of windmills. These leviathans are not conjured up by magic with the flick of a wand, but are manufactured in huge buildings. After about twenty years, they need to be replaced. Most of the parts are recyclable, but the blades are not. These either need to be crushed by a large, specially-designed machine, or hauled off by a large, specially-designed transporter. Either way, the blades end up in landfills. With all of this, how carbon neutral are windmills?
Speaking of recycling, how does that help the environment? Recycling metals uses a huge amount of energy and creates pollution. However, it uses a lot less energy and creates less pollution than mining, transporting and refining metal ore. Recycling metals actually helps and makes sense! That’s also why private industry had been doing it for years before the government got involved.
You can melt down a can and reshape it into another can, or something else useful, pretty much indefinitely. This doesn’t work with other materials. Here’s the difference between recycled and virgin paper:
Of course, you can make the recycled paper white enough that you can use like regular paper. The only trouble is that it is more expensive, uses more energy, and creates more pollution than just making paper from wood pulp. Still, it does make sense to recycle low-quality paper such as cardboard. Which, again, is why it was being done before the government got involved.
As for plastic and glass, recycling both requires more energy and creates more pollution than making it from raw materials. The most environmentally sound way to deal with them is to dispose of them.
Environmentalists love their trains. Apparently, the cutting edge of 19th-century technology is the solution to our transportation problems. The City of Austin recently spent about $150 million on a commuter rail system. This expenditure has reduced traffic congestion approximately 0 percent. If you stand next to I-35 during rush hour, more people will pass you in one minute than ride the train all day. A while ago, I was stopped at a railroad crossing for one of these trains. When it went by, I could see that there were fewer people in the train than cars stopped for it. It was only for a short time, no longer than a long traffic light. Still, that means that a couple of dozen cars were idling so 20 people could ride the train. If you multiply that by every railroad crossing in the city, that means that more gas is being wasted and more CO2 being generated by the idling vehicles than if those twenty people had driven their cars.
The newest fad for environmental activists seems to be blocking traffic to create traffic jams and setting trash on fire. An “environmentalist” who does something like that has about as much credibility as someone who drowns puppies and kittens to protest animal cruelty.
I’m not a “climate denier.” I agree that there is climate change, that some of it may be caused by mankind, and that we may have to do something to ameliorate the effects. However, if all of the “solutions” are as expensive, wasteful and counterproductive as windmills, recycling, and choo-choo trains, I think I’ll pass.
Oh, and at least show that you’re as concerned about the problem as you want me to be. Don’t tell me I can’t have air conditioning, then build a multi-million-dollar mansion for yourself. Don’t fly off in a private jet to an environmental conference, where you scold me for eating a hamburger. And if you block traffic with a burning dumpster, then tell me you’re going to take my car, I’d advise you to have good health insurance.
Published in Environment
Excellent post, Jose, just excellent. Environmentalists would rather not talk about this stuff.
Once they ban cars a lot more people will ride the train. Win-win.
You mean there might be hidden costs to environmentalism?
Hush or I shall dump my expended electric car batteries on your front lawn!
Nukes. Build nukes. Lots of nukes.
This is something woefully underemphasized in any discussion about renewable energy – the footprint of the facility. Wind and solar – the most often touted replacement sources of power – need huge areas of land to house the equipment needed to generate the equivalent amount of power from traditional plants. The need for large amounts of land coupled with their heavy dependence on natural phenomena (wind and sun vs. still air and night, clouds) make them unsuitable for large-scale, reliable electricity production.
And hydro. Lots of it.
Take a drive from Portland to Spokane, WA. The landscape has been completely destroyed by gigantic white storks – usually only about 25% of which are actually spinning.
I have said for years, that if we are serious about reducing carbon output, then there needs to be data on how much carbon is consumed making devices, so people can make decisions on how to conserve based on a carbon payback calculation.
For example (I am making these numbers up just to clarify my thinking), suppose a consumer is considering two options to conserve energy. One, install solar panels on their home. Two, install a geothermal system.
The solar array will save 10 pounds of carbon per year, and takes 400 pounds of carbon to make and install it. The carbon payback is 40 years. That is, it take 40 years before you are actually improving the environment.
The geothermal system saves 8 pounds of carbon per year and takes 160 pounds of carbon to manufacture and install. It’s carbon payback is 20 years.
With this data, a consumer can make the best decision on how to reduce their carbon output. Additionally, it also puts pressure on manufacturers to reduce the carbon require to manufacture their product. Lacking this information, we only focus on the energy savings, which is only part of the formula in calculating overall energy consumption.
Of course, non of the manufacturers will tell you how much energy it takes to make and install their systems (I have aggressively tried to get this from them). I suspect this is because the energy payback is not very attractive, when that is factored in.
Well done, Jose! Except you just raised my blood pressure a notch!
Ah yes. One renewable that creates more benfits than negatives. That’s why environmentalists are now opposed to them, and why California has problems with droughts and mudslides . . .
Chief Warren has a solution: no electricity for anyone. Ever.
This information should be spread far and wide. I’ve had enough of these people. Windmills are terrible for the environment, not only the blades which are hard to dispose of when they have to be replaced, but they kill millions of migrating birds and the energy they produce isn’t worth the trouble. How did we allow this to even happen.
And as for recycled paper and “environmentally friendly inks,” my card publisher started doing his catalogs that way one year, and the result was horrifying. The “white” background paper wasn’t quite white, and the product images looked dingy, muddy, and dull. Just awful.
I was morbidly amused by an episode in a TV cartoon series that came up in the viewing rotation for our 2 year old grandson while we were visiting. All the characters in the series are vehicles, at least some of which can transform into creatures with arms and legs, usually to rescue some vehicle in trouble.
The plot of this particular episode though was that the town was running out of energy, since all the town’s power came from solar and wind, and the weather had been calm and cloudy. This also affected the vehicles, which were all electric. The characters were all fretting over the need to conserve power (turn off air conditioning and even room fans, and turn off lights in the store so you can’t see the merchandise, etc.) because “there is nothing we can do” until the weather gets sunny and/or windy. I kept yelling (in my head – don’t want to scare the grandson), “yes there is something you can do – build a gas or coal or nuclear power plant you idiots!”
The drama for the climax of the episode was that a much needed windstorm was coming in just in the nick of time before all the batteries ran out. But the windmills were all pointed the wrong direction. Would the character vehicles needed to orient the windmills correctly have enough battery juice to get to the windmill farm and set the windmills before the storm arrived?*
I kept thinking, “How stupid to run a town so that it is entirely dependent on the whims of the weather.”
[*In case you wondered, some (but not all) of the hero character vehicles had just enough juice to make it to the windmill farm and orient the windmills just as the storm arrived.]
I support wind mills to produce energy, except I have total disdain for centralized wind mills.
Where I live in Calif, it is the usual pattern to have a wind of 6 to 15 mph after around 3:30 each day. So if I had had the money to invest in a small scale windmill when I moved to this house, i would not be paying PG &E some $ 175 each month over the summer for my AC. (When temps average 95 degrees per day in the summer, a person needs AC.)
One thing I am doing this winter is to figure out how to cheaply configure such a device for our back yard.
The spouse put together a $ 500 green house for less than some $ 75 and his labor. So I guess if we both put our minds into the project, we can do it.
And the structure will probably have most components except any motor and batteries coming to us from scavenging at the local dump. No oversized trucks need be involved.
Cartoons like this result in more Greta Thunbergs.
On our drives across west Texas to visit our grandchildren (and their parents) in New Mexico, the thousands of acres covered in windmill farms is quite the sight. We also see a number of caravans of trucks carrying the blades like that shown in the photo.
No house with carbon emissions? Guess we all have to start holding our breath . . .
And they kill threatened and endangered species. You think PETA would be out there with signs protesting every new wind farm going up . . .
Well, just tidbits like these. Merkel decided to made Germany Green powered, destroyed a vast anount of the countyrside and shut don all Nuclear power. fancifull concept save that German is the Industrial backbone of the EU economy a wind has failed badly. The windfarms also kill 1002 tonnes of birds, insects and bees annually.
It was also found that thee windfarms have kill 2.5 Billion birds to date., Chilliing thought.
As fur sustainable, the broken blades from just 3 windfarms , that amounts to 900 blades have been shipped to a Wyoming Landfill for disposal.
Gueess those are just the Hidden Costs. Nothing to see here move along !
I demand biodegradable windmills!
Most of them are genuine elitists. They just want to be in charge.
What will you do for those days when there *isn’t* sufficient wind to generate any power? Three possible answers:
–install sufficient battery capacity to run the AC for several hours
–maintain a tie to the grid, and use it when you’re not self-sustaining
–simply do without the AC at those times
…can’t think of any other options
Hose,
For over 35 years huge federal money has been poured into research in an attempt to improve this technology. Installations have been massively subsidized to keep them going. After all of this, it is crystal clear that this technology simply won’t cut it. It won’t be able to substitute for even a small but significant amount of our energy needs. Instead of accepting the hopelessness of this, the insane left wants to plunge us deeply into a “total” commitment to this technology that has been proven to be inadequate.
There is no proven threat from Man-Made Global Warming. However, there is a huge threat from those who believe in this and other environmental myths. It isn’t the environment that is the threat but the environmentalists.
Regards,
Jim
If you were instead paying someone other than PG&E a great deal more (which you would be to get the same product), would you be happy?
Don’t say that. The Left has a different definition of that phrase. It is a trick they do to win arguments. I suggest “there are climate cycles”. That is something the Left denies. When the Left corrupts the definition of a word or phrase, use another. They are not smart enough to keep up.
@caroljoy, you’d better off planting a tree than having a small windmill. Even at huge scale, catching winds 500′ up, windmills are horribly inefficient. Solar is better option for home energy production in Calif.
This is it. Drive across the heartland sometime and just notice who’s paying the price for “green” energy. It’s rural folks with no political power. They have these monstrosities literally in their backyards, vibrating in their brains whenever they’re operable (about 50/50 it seems). Think that will ever happen in Nantucket Sound off of Martha’s Vineyard where the Obama’s recently purchased a multimillion dollar property? Pheh, no sacrifices required of the elites.
It’s infuriating. Makes me hate ’em.
The Kennedys helped keep that from happening in their backyard.
The Wall Street Journal published on September 23 an article about farmers turning at least some of their land into solar panel acreage (the article may be behind the paywall). The drivers seem to be the current relatively low price for commodity crops and state subsidies. The article talks glowingly of the money farmers make for covering their farmland, and makes only a minor note about the potential long-term effects of covering millions of acres of prime farmland with solar panels rather than growing food.