Occasional Thoughts on Climate Change

[TheClimateChanger]

 

[TheClimateChanger]

 

[TheClimateChanger]

 

[TheClimateChanger]

 

[tacoman25]

17 hours ago, TheClimateChanger said:

 

What could go wrong?

[tacoman25]

6 hours ago, TheClimateChanger said:

 

Sure, anyone who points this out is a denier...it's the same dogma that leads to "everything about climate change is CATASTROPHIC and EVIL!"

[Silver Meteor]

Insightful comments on the state of science today.

 

[tacoman25]

 

[chubbs]

7 hours ago, tacoman25 said:

 

An oil industry myth. The bigger the wind turbine the faster it pays out the energy needed to make it. Only 64 days for a 3.4 MW turbine

https://pure.sruc.ac.uk/en/publications/life-cycle-analysis-of-the-embodied-carbon-emissions-from-14-wind/

https://www.vestas.com/en/sustainability/environment/energy-payback

 

[tacoman25]

3 hours ago, chubbs said:

An oil industry myth. The bigger the wind turbine the faster it pays out the energy needed to make it. Only 64 days for a 3.4 MW turbine

https://pure.sruc.ac.uk/en/publications/life-cycle-analysis-of-the-embodied-carbon-emissions-from-14-wind/

https://www.vestas.com/en/sustainability/environment/energy-payback

 

He says a lot more than that in that scene...not that I buy all of it, just thought there was some interesting points brought up.

[WolfStock1]

6 hours ago, chubbs said:

An oil industry myth. The bigger the wind turbine the faster it pays out the energy needed to make it. Only 64 days for a 3.4 MW turbine

https://pure.sruc.ac.uk/en/publications/life-cycle-analysis-of-the-embodied-carbon-emissions-from-14-wind/

https://www.vestas.com/en/sustainability/environment/energy-payback

 

 

I'm sorry, but those numbers don't even come close to passing the sniff test.

E.g.:

----------------------------

Alternatively, energy payback may be measured by ‘number of times payback’ – meaning, the amount of energy paid back to society versus the energy needed in the lifetime of that turbine. Over the life cycle of a V117-4.2 MW wind power plant, it will return 50 times more energy back to society than it consumed.  

That means that when 1 kWh is invested in a wind energy solution, you get 50 kWh in return. For coal, however, if you invest 1kWh you typically get below 0.4 kWh in return.

------------------------

They're honestly asserting that the trillions of $ invested in the coal and oil industries have provided *negative* energy returns?    That makes no sense.

Given the source though - a windmill manufacturer - it doesn't surprise me.   Much like the oil industry shills - they have a vested interest (no pun intended) in making competing technologies look bad.

[chubbs]

3 hours ago, WolfStock1 said:

 

I'm sorry, but those numbers don't even come close to passing the sniff test.

E.g.:

----------------------------

Alternatively, energy payback may be measured by ‘number of times payback’ – meaning, the amount of energy paid back to society versus the energy needed in the lifetime of that turbine. Over the life cycle of a V117-4.2 MW wind power plant, it will return 50 times more energy back to society than it consumed.  

That means that when 1 kWh is invested in a wind energy solution, you get 50 kWh in return. For coal, however, if you invest 1kWh you typically get below 0.4 kWh in return.

------------------------

They're honestly asserting that the trillions of $ invested in the coal and oil industries have provided *negative* energy returns?    That makes no sense.

Given the source though - a windmill manufacturer - it doesn't surprise me.   Much like the oil industry shills - they have a vested interest (no pun intended) in making competing technologies look bad.

Believe the table is calculating electric energy out vs fossil energy in over the powerplant lifetime; i.e., coal (or gas, oil) used to generate power is included. Fossil fuel use during operation of the wind turbine is also included. Agree that society gets an energy payback from use of coal or oil. The problem is that once burned the coal it is gone forever. 

In-any-case wind has a good energy payback. Here's an extensive study from Europe covering 33 different kinds of turbines. The median payback period is 6 months. Note that the energy payback for wind has to be good. Its the cheapest source of electricity in windy areas like the great plains. If it didn't pay back it wouldn't be cheap.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0196890421005100

[chubbs]

4 hours ago, tacoman25 said:

He says a lot more than that in that scene...not that I buy all of it, just thought there was some interesting points brought up.

Yea he brought up some good points: our economy and life-style is currently dependent on oil, and oil is running out. However. he's wrong that there is no alternative. Electric vehicles are out competing combustion vehicles in an increasing number of markets and getting cheaper all the time. Meanwhile the best oil reserves are increasingly depleted. Its not going to get better for oil.

[tacoman25]

11 minutes ago, chubbs said:

Yea he brought up some good points: our economy and life-style is currently dependent on oil, and oil is running out. However. he's wrong that there is no alternative. Electric vehicles are out competing combustion vehicles in an increasing number of markets and getting cheaper all the time. Meanwhile the best oil reserves are increasingly depleted. Its not going to get better for oil.

I don't think the point was that there is no alternative, just that we are hooked on oil in so many ways that there simply is no way to fully transition away from it at this point. And as far as energy/power goes, we are a long ways from being able to fully rely on electric. Not to mention the challenges that the current AI race is adding to the mix, with the enormous need for power there.

[WolfStock1]

1 hour ago, chubbs said:

Believe the table is calculating electric energy out vs fossil energy in over the powerplant lifetime; i.e., coal (or gas, oil) used to generate power is included. Fossil fuel use during operation of the wind turbine is also included. Agree that society gets an energy payback from use of coal or oil. The problem is that once burned the coal it is gone forever. 

In-any-case wind has a good energy payback. Here's an extensive study from Europe covering 33 different kinds of turbines. The median payback period is 6 months. Note that the energy payback for wind has to be good. Its the cheapest source of electricity in windy areas like the great plains. If it didn't pay back it wouldn't be cheap.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0196890421005100

 

I don't have access to the study itself, but I wonder what all they include when calculating payback times.   6.1 months seems small.

E.g. do they include:

• The energy to clear the forest, and grade the roads to the sites?
• The energy to build and install the additional power lines required to transport power from the generally-remote sites?
• The energy to run the vehicles to drive the workers to the sites?   To provide their housing, food, etc.?
• In addition to the energy to build and transport the wind turbines - does it include the energy to build, transport, and run the cranes that erect them?
• The energy to mine the ore used for the steel for the turbines?
• The energy to create the trucks that mine said ore, to transport the ore to smelters, etc. ?
• Etc. etc. - probably thousands of components that could be included, that go into creating, installing, and running wind turbines

?

(Obviously the same factors apply to all energy sources, not just wind)

How far one goes with the energy required to do something ends up being a hard-to-define thing; the farther removed it goes from the end product the harder it is to gauge, since the uses of that energy end up overlapping with other uses (e.g. a given truck used to mine iron ore would mine ore used both for a wind turbine and for say an airplane).   Nevertheless the fact that it's hard to measure doesn't mean it doesn't exist.   There *is* a lot more iron, aluminum, etc. required to support wind farms; in no small part because they are mostly-redundant systems; they don't replace baseline systems (mostly nuclear, hydro, fossil) but instead are generally additive.

With a number of only 6.1 months payback - I'm guessing they didn't go that far out the chain of dependencies.   That number seems very small to me.  I'm willing to be it's compiled by people who have a vested interest in making it as small as they can.

[WolfStock1]

59 minutes ago, chubbs said:

"Electric vehicles are out competing combustion vehicles in an increasing number of markets"

 

What markets?

In the US - California has by far the highest percentage of EV sales of any state - and even there ICE vehicles are outselling EVs by over 3 to 1.   And that was before the $7k tax incentive got removed recently.