this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
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This is demonstrably false, wind farms offset their carbon cost in a matter of single digit years and then it's pure profit.
These numbers exist, you don't have to take propaganda at face value. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/05/240516122608.htm
Here's something that might be accessible to you because it has funny https://youtu.be/wBC_bug5DIQ
Source: Shell via Fox News
No, no, you don't understand. It is far cleaner to dig huge holes in mountains, destabilizing the ground and washing the excess sludge into people's drinking water. Then, build a giant plant that belches radioactive debris and helps heat up the climate. Oh ya, also kill the people that produce it early, especially if you can use children.
It's less co2 emissions after 5 to 8 months.
https://www.vestas.com/en/sustainability/environment/energy-payback
What can "never" mean here?
So people run coal plants to destroy energy? Like, you have too much electricity and so you build a coal plant to get rid of it?
I'm not sure that whatever metric this source uses matches what most people think when they hear "energy amortization".
The energy was in a state that was not useful, and to generate useful energy with it you need to keep the input of that energy source flowing.
Edit: all energy plants took some kind of useless energy and transform it to one that can be used, the thing with wind, solar and hydro is that they took energy that is already there being wasted. While carbon, oil and gas take energy that is stored in a chemical form.
If you convert the chemical energy in a unit of coal to heat (burn it) you can calculate how much energy exists in that coal, measured in appropriate units (e.g. kWh). That is evidently what this author is trying to dumb down as "invested energy". The amount of energy extracted as electricity is typically 40% of that.. the rest ends up as heat which is much less useful than electricity.
I agree that this is not particularly useful in discussing the merits of different energy sources because good design tends to do as well as is practical and the supply of fuel and negative impacts of that process can't vary dramatically.
Since the emissions in the lifecycle of a wind turbine are from the energy used, the time period lasted would also be when it breaks even on CO2 emissions.
As for destroying energy, that's just the efficiency, the other 60% is wasted as heat.
It's a fun day when I see a new talking point.
I thought about doing the math to demonstrate that it's not true, but I feel like just having a good belly laugh and moving on is probably a better use of my time.
I wish it was new... These lazy fuckers recycle their talking points and morons like the one above eat them up because it's easier than a simple search I guess.
Btw, I do agree nuclear is great. But we need as much of both as we can get.
I'm for getting rid of coal and gas entirely, the grid doesn't need to be that diverse.