Re: Surprised?
How completely bizarre, people liking a cheap carbon-free source of power
Carbon free? How stupid can you get?
Tell me - what are they made from? Are there any metals or oils used in their manufacture? Any steel? Any plastics? Well there's a few tons of carbon there.
Tell me - do they just magically appear on site, or is there a very large amount of heavy machinery to transport them the thousands of miles from where they are made to where they are installed? A hell of a lot of carbon there.
Tell me - do the cables and switchgear that link them to the national grid use any metals, any rubbers, any plastics or other mined/refined materials? Much more carbon.
Tell me - do the sites the windfarms magically appear on magically appear by themselves, or is a lot of heavy machinery used in building the necessary roading to said sites, getting the cables to the sites, and doing the groundwork (lots of carbon in concrete!)? A few metric tonnes of carbon involved there, thousands of litres of oil burned per site etc. (well, given the roading needed for some of the sites I've seen I'd be surprised if it wasn't at least 2,000l/diesel per site)
Tell me - when the windfarm's gearbox fails after a very short time, is there a lot of carbon used in the production of a new gearbox, transporting it to site, replacing the old, transporting the old away?
Tell me - when your wind turbines stop spinning a second generator must already be up to speed before the wind turbine stops producing power - is there a lot of carbon involved in the manufacture, transport, installation, cabling etc of that generator? And there's a good chance that said backup generator would be coal, gas, oil, or "biomass" (ie wood chips shipped in from another country1 - no there's no carbon involved in that really!)
Tell me - when a wind turbine in the country has one of those spectacular fieiry failures you see on youtube, what's the black smoke? No carbon in that? What about when they fail somewhere where there's no fire appliances nearby and a lot of ground gets burnt as a result - any carbon released there? No?
Wind is probably the worst polluter of any, and has a very high carbon footprint. People promoting it are either misled, totally stupid, or in it for the money. Saying it's "carbon-free" suggests you may be in the 2nd camp, though hopefully the first and hopefully you'll sit down and do the math yourself and figure this out. That's why I am now very much against wind when I used to be someone who promoted it! Oh, and if you're in the 3rd camp, well what I have to say to those people is probably illegal so I won't say it here.
1 Maybe instead of shipping wood pellets or whatever, they could a ) site the power station near the coast and b) build wooden ships and sail them right into the power plant... Sails could be made of wood fibres (something closer to sail canvas than paper though) and could be burnt as well (if this would be a net saving of course)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
