Asian wind blows gaily

Wind energy is expected to do better in India with the generation-based incentive (GBI) reinstated in February. The government will also offer low-interest loans for wind projects through the National Clean Energy Fund. India's current installed wind capacity is 26.9 GW, and the nation plans to install 30 GW by 2017. Analysts agree that India is on track to achieve this target - but there is doubt about the target for 2012-2013. Between April and December 2012 India added only 982.5 MW of wind power capacity, less than half the previous year's numbers. Analysts say the required capacity is unlikely to be added before the end of the fiscal year.

Wind is seen as more scalable than solar, given wind's faster project development times, ease of financing and the maturity of the Indian wind sector. But there are also big challenges. Most discoms haven't raised their tariffs for 7-10 years due to political complications and are unable to pay for the power they buy. Another red flag for investors has been that revenue from carbon credits isn't particularly high. Governments in several states have begun issuing notices asking discoms to explain how they are meeting their renewable energy purchase obligations. But the state governments haven't yet begun enforcing penalties, so certificate revenue hasn't yet kicked in, and the bulk of the purchase obligation falls on the discoms.
The wind is also blowing in favour of India’s neighbor. According to new statistics from the China Electricity Council, China’s wind power production actually increased more than coal power production for the first time ever in 2012. Thermal power use, which is predominantly coal, grew by only about 0.3 percent in China during 2012, an addition of roughly 12 terawatt hours (TWh) more electricity. In contrast, wind power production expanded by about 26 TWh. This rapid expansion brings the total amount of wind power production in China to 100 TWh, surpassing China’s 98 TWh of nuclear power. The air quality targets the government set for 2016 will require cutting coal pollution. Already last year the government set new strict standards for coal power emissions, requiring costly investments in filters. This year the government set new water use targets for provinces, which do not give much room for increased use of water for coal use in key provinces.

Building storage costly, says study

A key problem to wind energy development in the US is that the electrical grid has virtually no storage capacity, so grid operators can't stockpile surplus clean energy and deliver it at night, or when the wind isn't blowing. To provide more flexibility in managing the grid, researchers have begun developing new batteries and other large-scale storage devices. But the fossil fuel required to build these technologies could negate some of the environmental benefits of installing new solar and wind farms, according to Stanford University scientists.

"We calculated how much energy it will cost society to build storage on future power grids that are heavily supplied by renewable resources," said Charles Barnhart, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford's Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP) and lead author of the study. "It turns out that that grid storage is energetically expensive, and some technologies, like lead-acid batteries, will require more energy to build and maintain than others."

The results are published in a recent online edition of the journal Energy & Environmental Science.

Most of the electricity produced in the United States comes from coal- and natural gas-fired power plants. Only about 3 percent is generated from wind, solar, hydroelectric and other renewable sources. The Stanford study considers a future U.S. grid where up to 80 percent of the electricity comes from renewables.

Wind and solar power show great potential as low-carbon sources of electricity, but they depend on the weather, said co-author Sally Benson, a research professor of energy resource engineering at Stanford and the director of GCEP.

The total storage capacity of the U.S. grid is less than 1 percent, according to Barnhart. What little capacity there is comes from pumped hydroelectric storage, a clean, renewable technology. Here's how it works: When demand is low, surplus electricity is used to pump water to a reservoir behind a dam. When demand is high, the water is released through turbines that generate electricity.

For the Stanford study, Barnhart and Benson compared the amount of energy required to build a pumped hydro facility with the energetic cost of producing five promising battery technologies: lead-acid, lithium-ion, sodium-sulfur, vanadium-redox and zinc-bromine. The data revealed that all five batteries have high embodied-energy costs compared with pumped hydroelectric storage.

After determining the embodied energy required to build each storage technology, the next step was to calculate the energetic cost of maintaining the technology over a 30-year timescale. To quantify the long-term energetic costs, the team came up with a new mathematical formula they dubbed ESOI, or energy stored on investment. The higher the ESOI value, the better the storage technology is energetically.

A pumped hydro facility has an ESOI value of 210. It can store 210 times more energy over its lifetime than the amount of energy that was required to build it. The five battery technologies fared much worse. Lithium-ion batteries were the best performers, with an ESOI value of 10. Lead-acid batteries had an ESOI value of 2, the lowest in the study.

To reduce a battery's long-term energetic costs, one way is to improve its cycle life -- that is, increase the number of times the battery can charge and discharge energy over its lifetime. None of the conventional battery technologies featured in the study has reached that level. Lithium-ion is the best at 6,000 cycles, while lead-acid technology is at the bottom, achieving a mere 700 cycles.

They also calculated the material costs of building these grid-scale storage technologies. And found that the material constraints aren't as limiting as the energetic constraints. It appears that there are plenty of materials in the Earth to build energy storage. There are exceptions, such as cobalt, which is used in some lithium-ion technologies, and vanadium, the key component of vanadium-redox flow batteries.

China racing ahead in wind energy

China advanced past 50 gigawatts (GW) of on-grid/connected wind power capacity in 2012, and this is expected to grow a further 40% by the end of 2013. In 2012, China had nearly 35% of new wind power installations, according to the Global Wind Energy Council’s 2012 report. GTM Media Research and Azure International in their China Wind Market Quarterly for the fourth quarter of 2012 said the emerging market country is on target this year to add another 18 GW of installed grid connected wind capacity. Based on report projections, China will reach 140 GW of installed capacity by 2015, far exceeding expectations in 2011 of 100 GW.

Some of the underlying strength seen in the Chinese wind market is due to recent government action to help solve some of the domestic wind industry concerns. This included revamping surcharge revenue and pre-appropriating funding this year.

However, rapid growth for China’s wind sector should become more levelled out in the years to come, as the industry should see more linear growth, the report said.

The frozen warriors

Small rooftop wind generators are being increasingly installed in many cities in India. But the issue is that wind speeds are below required rates in most places. Surprisingly the subsidy given by MNRE places no criteria as to which zone the installations are permitted in. Geographically, experts say that hardly 10% area is suitable for wind machines as wind power is proportional to cube of velocity. A 1000 watt machine designed for 12 m/sec velocity generates less than 100 watt at half wind speed of 6m/sec and ceases to generate at 4 m/sec. They remain like battle showpieces perched on housetops!

What is the solution in such a scenario? Why can’t the state renewable development agencies offer consultancy solutions to households opting for such units? Instead of rushing to pitch in and go self-reliant in every which way, people need to be educated on what is the best locally available resource. Witness the recent scramble in Bangalore to segregate waste at source, and the resultant mandate on large apartment blocks left high and dry to do composting of wet waste independently.  The situation could have been avoided if citizens were prepared in advance. Should PV panels be placed on rooftops? What are the maintenance conditions? Do manufacturers bother to educate buyers? What the sensitive citizen needs today is not to be confronted with a wide array of possible solutions but a consultant giving wise choices. Like with everything else, one size does not fit all and each case presents a new possibility.

Unlimited wind

Exactly how much energy we can feasibly pull from the wind has been something of a controversial question in recent years, with some studies suggesting that wind power has its limits. Simulations unveiled this week by scientists in Delaware and California, though, argue that if anything, economics and politics will hold wind development back, rather than geophysical limits.

Wind-power systems work by taking the kinetic energy of wind and turning it into mechanical energy in the turbine to create electrical energy. Laws of physics tell us that the total amount of energy can’t change, so at least a minor slowing of the wind is expected as it passes through the turbine. New research, published Sunday in Nature Climate Change, used a climate model to estimate that limit, both for turbines placed near Earth’s surface—as they are built now—and for high-altitude turbines, such as the kite-like tethered devices currently under development.

They found that the geophysical limit for Earth-based turbines is 428 terawatts or more but a whopping 1873 TW for high-altitude systems. The current global power demand? About 18 TW.  Another study of wind power’s geophysical limits, published in the journal Energy Policy in 2011, arrived at an upper limit of about 1 TW. But Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, says that “the calculation of 1 TW was literally done with a back-of-the-envelope single-line equation” and didn’t take actual physical properties of turbines or the atmosphere into account.

All such calculations on the limit aside, we need to remember we do not even have enough cement to build so many turbines. To get to even 100 TW of installed capacity would require somewhere around 20 million very large turbines. A somewhat more realistic 4 million turbines could easily supply about half the world’s power.

The new studies also address a separate issue that arises with massive numbers of wind turbines: Can they actually cause climate change? The changes in kinetic energy that result from millions of spinning turbines do have an effect, but significant alterations to global temperature or weather patterns are only likely at “truly absurd extraction rates.”

Catch the wind

Wind energy opponents who say that producing electricity using the power of the wind is not efficient would do well to take a look at a new graphic using UK Government data which shows that thermal sources of electricity – gas, coal, nuclear, waste/biomass, oil and other – lose massive amounts of energy as waste heat, compared to almost 0% for renewables.

Gas accounts for 48% of the UK’s electricity supply and, of the 372 Terra-Watt hours of electricity it produces per year, 54% of this is lost as heat. Coal, meanwhile, accounts for 28% producing 297 TWh, loses an even higher proportion – 66%. Nuclear – accounting for 16% of the energy supply with 162 TWh, loses 65% and oil – 3% of the supply with 51 TWh – loses 77%.

Renewable energy – which all together accounts for 4% of the UK’s electricity supply producing 14 TWh – loses less than one percent. So, under this measure, renewable energy is 100% efficient.

Wind energy opponents centre their arguments on the ‘capacity factor’ of a wind farm. Wind farms do not operate at wind speeds of less than 4 metres per second, and they are shut down to prevent damage during gale force winds of 25 metres/second or more, or for maintenance. But conventional power stations also do not operate all the time – they stop generating electricity during maintenance or breakdowns.

Comparing the outputs of both sources does show that conventional power stations produce power at a level compared to their theoretical maximum that is currently higher than the level for wind energy. Wind power’s capacity factor is around 30% onshore and 40% offshore, increasing year on year as more wind turbines come online and technology improves. Meanwhile, data from the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (Bundesverband der Energie und Wasserwirtschaft) shows that fossil fuels are often below 50%, even in winter.

A pat there for wind, but wait to see more in our next post.

Windfarms raise temperature

Large windfarms can increase local night time temperatures by fanning warmer air onto the ground, new research has revealed. The study used satellite data to show that the building of huge wind farms in west Texas over the last decade has warmed the nights by up to 0.72C.




West Texas has seen rapid expansion of wind farms, with turbine numbers rising from 111 in 2003 to 2358 in 2011. The team compared the land surface temperatures at the wind farms with other areas across this period and detected a clear rise at night.


They note, however, that the effect on the air temperature, which is usually given in weather forecasts, will be lower than 0.72C rise because they respond less quickly to changes than land temperatures.


The scientists say the effect is due to the gentle turbulence caused by the wind turbines. After the sun has set, the land cools down more quickly than the air, leaving a cold blanket of air just above the ground. But the turbine wakes mix this cold layer with the warmer air above, raising the temperature. A previous study found a similar effect but was based on data from only two weather stations over just six weeks.


This of course does not mean we rule out wind farms as they have to be a part of the mix. All that the research means is that we still need to be careful before plunging into any new technology. Small wind farms can be the solution instead of massive ones. Or a combination of windfarms with biofuel crops?

Windfall in the offing

A new report says that the wind energy potential in India may be 30 times greater than previous government estimates.

In an analysis of land actually suitable to wind power development, researchers from the U.S. Energy Department’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found a potential for 2,006 megawatts of energy with the deployment of 80-meter (262 feet) turbines and 3,121 gigawatts using 120-meter (393 feet) turbines.

The Indian government had previously estimated that the nation’s on-land wind energy potential was 102 gigawatts. Improved turbine efficiency and the inclusion of a wider area of land suitable for wind energy development contributed to the significantly higher estimates.

“The main importance of this study, why it’s groundbreaking, is that wind is one of the most cost-effective and mature renewable energy sources commercially available in India, with an installed capacity of 15 gigawatts and rising rapidly,” said Amol Phadke, lead author of the report. According to the report, more than 95 percent of the country's wind energy potential is located in five states in southern and western India.

A blot, or a gift...

In UK, there is much hot air being generated by talk on wind energy. Are wind turbines a blot on the landscape, or a gift to the planet? Are they really clean?

For instance, does the energy used to construct a wind turbine outweigh the energy produced during its lifetime in operation? Some say so. Others think not. An evidence review published in the journal Renewable Energy in 2010, which included data from 119 turbines across 50 sites going back 30 years, concluded that the average windfarm produces 20-25 times more energy during its operational life than was used to construct and install its turbines. It also found that the average "energy payback" of a turbine was 3-6 months.

A life-cycle analysis published in 2011 by Vestas, a Danish turbines manufacturer, of a 100MW onshore windfarm consisting of 33 3MW turbines concluded, unsurprisingly, that the siting of the turbines is crucial in maximising the energy return ratio. "Doubling the distance to the grid from 50 km to 100 km typically increases impacts per kWh by 3-5%," it concluded. "If the wind plant operates in low-wind conditions then the [negative] impacts per kWh electricity produced increases by 23% compared to medium wind conditions." But it stressed that the energy used to transport and install the turbines was "very insignificant".

There is the question of new jobs! (Don't ask about old ones lost.) According to the wind trade association RenewableUK, offshore wind could spark £3bn of investment in the UK supply chain by 2022, supporting more than 45,000 long-term jobs.

As to tech innovation, wind energy is constantly improvising. From onshore to offshore to floating turbines, the efficiency keeps rising and costs dropping.

What do you think? Write in.

UK's offshore wind energy up

Statistics for the third quarter of 2011, released by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, show that renewable sources generated 9 per cent of the UK’s electricity from July to September. That represents an increase of nearly 1 per cent on the same quarter last year.

DECC highlighted the fact that the amount of electricity generated from offshore wind has increased “substantially” compared to the same quarter in 2010, partly because of increased capacity, and partly because it was the windiest September for at least ten years.

When the overall figures for the first three quarters of 2011 (Jan – Sept) are taken into account, the statistics show a 64% increase in the amount of electricity generated by offshore wind on the same three quarters for last year (up from 4865 gigawatt hours to 6618GWh), and a 36% increase for onshore wind (up from 1943 GWh to 3189 GWh).

DECC also highlighted the growth in the UK’s installed capacity to generate electricity from renewable sources of 400 megawatts in the third quarter of the year – a 12 per cent increase on Q3 a year earlier. Nearly two-thirds of that increase (240MW) came from onshore and offshore wind, with the first turbines of the Ormonde and Greater Gabbard offshore wind farms beginning operation.

The UK now has enough installed capacity to supply more than 3,300,000 homes from wind energy.

Keeping wind turbines safely operating however is becoming increasingly important as more windmills are built. Manufacturers of wind turbines face challenges such as reducing downtimes and maintenance work. Some of the demands placed on turbine components include extreme temperature conditions, vibration, oscillation and aggressive offshore air composition. These are challenges that need to be tackled.

Making wind energy predictable

Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are studying ways to better forecast the sharp increases and decreases in wind speeds so that electricity generation from wind farms can be more effectively integrated into the grid.

Besides the environmental concerns of bird kills and noise pollution often cited, the variability of wind power is a challenge, especially to utilities; surges in wind power generation, for example, can overload the grid at certain times. Now, researchers at the California-based Lawrence Livermore lab are using advanced computer software and sensors to determine what meteorological conditions in various regions are likely to cause so-called “ramp events,” when winds rise or fall sharply.

The project, called WindSENSE, is using wind energy data from two regions where wind power generation is increasing rapidly — the Tehachapi Pass in Southern California and the Columbia River Basin in Oregon. In such windy regions, ramp events can cause wind energy generation to fluctuate by more than 1,000 megawatts an hour.

The work identified important weather variables associated with ramp events and will help people in the control room at the utilities determine when ramp events may occur and how that will affect the power generation from a particular wind farm.

Let the wind sing its song.

Wind energy to become cheap soon

Wind is catching up on solar, and how! A new analysis says that wind will be as cheap as natural gas in a couple of years!

The best wind farms in the world are already competitive with coal, gas, and nuclear plants. But over the next five years, continued performance improvements and cost reductions will bring the average onshore wind plant in line with cheap natural gas, even without a price on carbon, according to analysis from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).

After analyzing the cost curve for wind projects since the mid-1980s, BNEF researchers showed that the cost of wind-generated electricity has fallen 14 percent for every doubling of installation capacity. These cost reductions are due to a number of factors: more sophisticated manufacturing, better materials, larger turbines, and more experience with plant operations and maintenance. Those improvements, combined with an oversupply of turbines on the global market, will bring the average cost of wind electricity down another 12 percent by 2016.

In the next few years the mainstream world is going to wake up to wind cheaper than gas, and rooftop solar power cheaper than daytime electricity. Add in the same sort of deep long-term price drops for power storage, demand management, LED lighting and so on.

Welcome claen energy!

Wind speed up

It has been another record year for newly installed wind capacity – to the tune of 39.4 GW. The year 2010 brought total installed capacity worldwide to around 200,000 MW, an impressive increase in cumulative worldwide installations of some 25 percent. However, in terms of the volume of annual installed capacity the increase was a far more modest three percent.

For the industry as a whole, the year-on-year growth rate in 2010 in fact decreased from 35 percent in 2009 to just 3%. Remarkably, it is the first year that the market has shown a slowdown in growth since 2004.

China made the greatest contribution to the global wind power installations in 2010 and it is important to note that 48 percent of the world's installations over the year took place in the country. Consolidation among turbine suppliers has been a particularly strong feature over the past three years.

It is worth noting that 2010 also saw more MW-rated Chinese manufactured turbines exported. During the year, five Chinese turbine suppliers installed 13 machines in five different foreign markets.

Asia experienced significant growth, including the OECD Pacific region which increased its cumulative capacity from 42,037 MW in 2009 to 63,645 MW in 2010, a growth of 51.4 percent. China was by far and away the leading country, with 18,928 MW of new capacity in 2010. India also saw an increase to see 2139 MW of new installations. The region as a whole accounted for 54.8 percent of the year's global total.

The offshore sector has expanded, with a total capacity of 1444 MW installed in 2010, which represents a 109 percent annual increase. Nine new offshore wind farms, with a combined power generating capacity of 1405 MW, were installed in Europe, especially the UK. The remainder of new offshore capacity was in China.

Wind in your sails!

The global power sector is the largest industrial water user, and it has to start addressing the issue of water consumption, especially in the light of rising electricity demand, and increasing droughts created by the world’s changing climate.

And, to mitigate climate change, the power sector not only needs to become CO2 free, but also reduce its water consumption.

Thermal power systems are based upon what is known as the Rankin cycle. Often, steam is used to power turbines, but then it must be cooled to become liquid. Coal, Nuclear, or even solar power could be used to heat the steam, but tremendous amounts of water are usually required for cooling. In many places, that water is in very short supply or essential for our domestic water needs and agriculture. A shortage of water would require such power stations operate at less than full capacity.

Conventional fossil fuel and nuclear power plants make up 78% of global electricity production. Should they be unable to provide the necessary power due to increased water shortages, economic collapse may not be far behind.

Well, turns out that wind energy is almost water-free! US Department of Energy estimates that 20% of wind power in the US power system by 2030 would save as much as 4 trillion gallons (15 trillion litres) of water. More reason to pursue wind?

Blowing foul

Here's another twist to the windy tale. Wind farms produce far less energy than previously claimed, according to a new report. Wind-energy output at wind farms metered by the UK’s National Grid was less than 10% capacity for one third of the time during the two-year study. For numerous extended periods of time all the wind turbines linked to the National Grid muster less than 20MW of energy: enough power for 6,667 households to boil their kettles for a cup of tea.

Low output also sometimes coincided with periods of peak demand. The report, supported by Scottish conservation charity the John Muir Trust, said wind "cannot be relied upon" to provide any significant level of energy generation at any defined time in the future.

It also called into question common assertions made by industry such as that wind turbines will generate on average 30% of their rated capacity over a year.

The study challenged assertions by industry and government such as that periods of widespread low wind are "infrequent". It found that the average frequency and duration of a low wind event of 20MW or fewer was once every 6.38 days for a period of 4.93 hours.

The study also found that at each of the four highest peak demands of 2010 wind output was low, being respectively 4.72%, 5.51%, 2.59% and 2.51% of capacity. Wind generation was below 20% of capacity for more than half the period of the study.

Well, one can contest that this is the story for Scotland alone. Really?

Offshore wind: economies of scale the answer

The cost of harvesting offshore wind energy may be a lot lower than the early numbers from controversial projects suggest. A leading U.S. researcher explains how and why deep ocean offshore wind can be the cost-effective renewable energy answer.

The cost of electricity from most emerging offshore projects is, he says, very expensive because they have “large uncertainties and a large learning curve. Those costs do not truly reflect where this industry will be in ten years if we scale up the industry properly.”

The team wants to build floating turbines that can be towed out to sea and anchored, eliminating the costs and risks of construction. By doing as much as possible on land, pre-assemble these units, and doing very little in the water, they plan to save money.

Half of the price is transmission and distribution, the other half is generating electrons. The crucial assumption, is that the industry matures enough by 2020 to the point where it achieves the capacity to build 1,000-megawatt projects. At that size, economies of scale will make it possible to build floating wind farms at costs that will meet the low cost goal.

Wind on a surge

The global wind market will start to grow again this year, according to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), installing 40 GW of new capacity.

The Council’s five-year industry forecast published earlier this week predicts that by 2015, global wind capacity will have more than doubled from 194.4 GW at the end of 2010 to 450 GW.

The forecast assumes an average growth rate of 18.2% a year, which the GWEC says is ‘conservative’ compared with growth over the last decade. Even 2010 did see strong investment in wind power, up 31% on 2009 to reach $96 billion, driven primarily by China.

China alone accounted got almost half of the new capacity added in 2010 and could exceed annual additions of 20 GW by 2015. The government’s new five-year plan has set a target of 70 GW, which the country could, in fact, surpass.

Not all winds flow foul!

Now, who will stop the wind?

The spectacular growth in recent years in the number and size of renewable energy sources across the European Union -- particularly wind and solar power -- driven by high subsidies and government rhetoric on climate change has left the national electricity grids scrambling to cope. Estimated costs of strengthening, upgrading and smartening the grids are put at up to €100 billion ($138 billion) over the next decade alone. And that only takes into account onshore networks.

A study earlier this year by German company Energynautics commissioned by Greenpeace found that grid upgrades totaling up to 140 GW of capacity would be necessary across the European Union and eastern and northern Europe to cope with the vast increase planned in renewable energy.

Germany produces only about 5 gigawatts of actual wind power, and when recently that output shot up to a record of more than 20 GW on a particularly windy weekend, cross-border connections to grids in neighboring countries had to be shut down because they couldn't handle the surging power. The Germans need to build 17,000 kilometers of new grid just internally.

With the United Kingdom, for one, aiming to get some 30 GW of electricity from wind farms in the North Sea within the next decade as part of its E.U. target to get 15 percent of its power from renewables by 2020, there are also proposals to build a giant subsea grid to bring that power ashore.

Problems are not just of power loss and heat generation over long distances, but also of public acceptability and cost. As with onshore wind farms, there is frequent public outcry over the placement of power pylons while placing it underground has technical issues like cooling.

Countries are still struggling to build their own networks, let alone when it comes to crossing borders and the only country really doing it is China, using European technology!

So do we see a problem of plenty, or that of being unprepared? And do we learn a lesson from the early beginners?!

Wind edging close to coal

The cost of onshore wind power has dropped to record lows, and in some regions is competitive with electricity generated by coal-fired plants, according to a survey by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. In some regions of Brazil, Mexico, Sweden, and the United States, the cost of electricity generated by wind farms is on par with coal-fired power, the report said.

Bloomberg said it based its analysis on a review of wind turbine contracts provided by 28 turbine buyers in 28 markets across the world. Those contacts represent nearly 7,000 megawatts' worth of turbines.

For the past few years, wind turbine costs went up due to rising demand around the world and the increasing price of steel. Wind manufacturers were reducing their costs, and now we have cheap wind energy thanks to overcapacity in the supply chain.

Heavy metal, heavy energy

Desert lands and wastelands are a favourite destination for renewable energy projects like solar, wind and biofuels. But often the question we fail to ask is, if these regions are really dead and waste? And if not, can we tamper with the ecosystems at work?

For example, Doors of Perception (a unique international conference on sustainable designs for future) wonders if windmills are really green?

Once topsoil and plant life have been disrupted for the placement of solar arrays, wind farms, power plants, transmission lines and CO2 scrubbers, restoration would be cost-prohibitive, if not technically impossible - and in any case can take 100 years or more. widespread desert construction, even of projects aimed at environmental mitigation, "would devastate the very organisms and ecosystems best able to adjust to a warming world".

Remember, these vast arrays and farms also mean huge amount of materials deployed. In wind farms, the compartments at the top of each tower, that contain the generator, hub and gearbox, each weigh 15,000 kilos upwards (30,000 to 45,000 pounds)!

Other components of a utility-scale wind farm include underground power transmission systems, control and maintenance facilities, and substations that connect farms with the utility power grid. That's a lot of embodied energy. Yes.

Are we looking at the material costs and energy expended to build all those equipment we will need if we are to replace all the fossil fuel plants??