How sustainable is this…?

A news article caught my attention; it shows that with fossil fuels you can do anything, but you have to ask yourself, just how long will it take for these wind turbines to repay their embodied energy?  Furthermore, as I keep saying over and over, none of the carbon emitted in these exercises is ever removed by the wind turbines. Emissions are cumulative. That is, for those who do not, or refuse to understand, they add up. The fact that these turbines do not emit CO2 (much) in their operation, does not negate the fact that their installation already has increased the atmosphere’s CO2 content. As George Monbiot said, everything Must Go…….  and that includes these monsters.

The 65m long (2/3 the length of a football field) blades were individually trucked 530km from Port Adelaide in South Australia to Silverton, NSW, near Broken Hill….  that’s three trips adding up to nearly 1600km or a thousand miles for you American readers…. and I bet they weren’t cruising at normal highway speed either, almost certainly worsening fuel consumption.

Worse, a new road was built to bypass Broken Hill and avoid some roundabouts…… now I realise the cost, both financial and environmental, of the road will be amortised over the total 58 turbines planned for this site, but all the same same….. it takes a lot of fossil fuels to build roads…. especially that far from civilisation.

“There will be relatively constant deliveries from the start of the new year all the way through to about May.” states the ABC News website. If all the bits have to be trucked that far, three blades, a tower in at least two pieces, the nacelle (assuming it can be trucked in one piece), and god knows what else, I make it out to be almost 185,000km of truck miles, not counting getting cranes and reinforcing steel and concrete there. Oh and did I mention the trucks had to go back from where they came…?  Make that 370,000km, or more than nine times around the Earth….. or almost the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

3.5MW turbines require 400 tonnes of concrete in their foundations. This is 29 truck loads, each load having to do a 50km return trip from Broken Hill. To pour all 58 foundations means those concrete trucks will have to travel 84,000 km, or roughly equal to twice around the Earth…. which doesn’t include the concrete pumps. Nor the energy needed to make 23,000 tonnes of concrete, one of the worst greenhouse emitters. And I worry about the concrete in my house…!

The parts for the turbines also come from all over the world, with components for the General Electric turbines being manufactured in Germany, Spain and Korea.

Like I said…..  with fossil fuels, you can do anything. Oh and I nearly forgot…..  AGL, who will own this windfarm, are going to supply the locals with solar panels and water tanks, and AGL would contribute $50,000 to efforts to improve mobile reception in the area. just to make it all look sustainable and shut the locals up.

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More pouring…..

The owner builder gods have been smiling upon me…… since expressing concern about maybe having missed the boat with further concreting and Tasmania’s fickle weather, the frosty and rainy weather went on holidays long enough that I decided to persevere, and it’s all paid off….

shower grates

Mind you, it wasn’t without the odd thing going wrong. As Glenda and I reinvented the bathroom layouts, I had to wait for several days for the new grates we are going to use in the shower area before I was able to finish the second spider (see above link). I ended up buying two of these online for $200, while Bunnings were selling them for $300 each…… always shop around!

While waiting, I made three of the four pipes that run into the riser. The riser was in its position, in the middle of the bathroom mockup in the shed, ready to go; once the fourth pipe was carefully glued together, I assembled the spider, only to discover later that the riser had been sitting for days on the floor upside down……… Sacré bleu! I thought I’d worked a way to get away with it, even dragging it up to the house site for installation, until I realised that the riser is moulded in such a way that all those pipes fall to the fitting (it’s only a two degree fall, but it’s important!) and that now all those pipes were going uphill…… and as we all know, water does not run uphill!

I really hate stuffing things up, but I had to go and buy another fitting (50km return trip and $35 later..), destroy the original one, and refit the entire thing properly. I’m getting really good at problem solving.

waterproof membrane in place

I re-hired Caleb to do my heavy lifting and unload another couple of tons of crusher dust off the ute to cover up all those bare dirt patches between the trenches while I went to work putting them together.

There’s a lot to think about. I almost forgot to glue the outlet pipe from the second bathroom, and had to dig it up, by hand. No major drama this time, but there you go. These outlets also have to be lagged with 40mm of foam where they penetrate the footing in case the highly reactive soil I seem to continually build on make the concrete move and break the pipes. It pays to know how

lagged outlet pipe

to read an engineer’s drawings!

Once all the crusher dust was in place, we covered it with the thick plastic moisture proof membrane my supplier sold me, and before you know it, I was ordering another ten cubic metres of concrete.

On the day, I was training Caleb on how I wanted him to rake the concrete towards himself while he stood on the first footing and I inserted the concrete vibrator into the pile of the wet stuff that would land in the middle of the trench. To my amazement, and Caleb’s visible delight, as soon as the vibrator started doing its thing, the concrete came to the end of the trench all by itself, like water in a flash flood……  I tell you, that device is worth its weight in gold! It easily does the work of at least one other man, and maybe more. Mind you, I also had to deal with the end of the machine vibrating itself off, and having to work out the thread was mysteriously left hand – very odd, as left hand threads are usually used to stop things vibrating off! No pressure….  I only had a concrete truck waiting for me to get going again…….

We had two truck loads of concrete in place within just forty-five minutes……. and I had expected it to take twice this long with only two of us on the job!

Now all I have to do is pour a perfectly level and perfectly flat slab on top of the whole thing (after I return from another trip to Queensland to celebrate our fortieth wedding anniversary!), and we can start BUILDING! I really can’t wait to be past this stage; I didn’t want to do this in the first place, but I am saving so much money, it will all be worth it. And to be honest, it’s all turned out even better than I expected, and I am justifiably proud of my handy work……  watch this space.

Making spiders……

It’s wet and cold, the building site’s a quagmire, and I feel like writing a story……

I seem to make a habit of one thing leading to another when it comes to building. Just prior to moving to the Huon in ute I,  I decided to see if I could buy a bidet or two on eBay. I really like the idea of going toilet paper free, as much as possible… Sure enough, I found quite a few, in Melbourne. Not just any old bidets it turned out, but high end Italian designer models! And they were $19 each – no, not a typo – which must have been less than 10% of their normal cost….. I told the seller I was moving to Tasmania, and I’d pick them up on my way through, and he was cool about holding onto them until I arrived.

Little did I know the seller was a large business that bought out other firms going under. They would buy their entire stock for an agreed sum, and anything a bit slow to move, was sold off dirt cheap. Like bidets. When I arrived, I was gobsmacked to find a huge warehouse, easily 20 times the size of my large shed, full of building goodies; not least same brand double handbasins that matched my bidets, and they too were a bargain at $35…. They are quite unusual, being circular in design. I even bought all the taps I need for a song. I recently saw handbasins for $500 that weren’t half as nice as these….

Then one day, while watching Grand Designs on TV, I saw a circular bathtub. I’d never ever seen one like that before, and it got me thinking that maybe we could get one to match the rest of the bathroom fittings I had already bought. Sure enough, I found some, not cheap though…… from around $1500 to ‘the sky is the limit’ kind of designer prices.

Then when I drove down from Queensland in ute III (the 4WD one), I had another look, and found something in Sydney I could pick up on the way down. Luckily, as it turns out, they were out of stock, and so arrived in Geeveston empty-handed. Six months later, Matt next door was going to Melbourne to pick up a new ute, and he suggested that if I needed anything picked up there, he’d bring it back for me. And you guessed it….. I found someone who manufactured fibreglass Japanese Plunge Baths, for half the price of the one I missed out on in Sydney…….. some things are just meant to happen! Even better, the factory was two streets from where Matt was picking up his ute! You couldn’t make this stuff up……

Of course, our original drawings don’t show any of these things, and as I’m now contemplating pouring the house slab, I have to bury all the waste plumbing underneath, and so the bathrooms have to be planned properly. Once the slab is poured, the bathroom layout is literally cast in concrete. Obviously, Glenda wants to have a say in how this all pans out, and spent several days drawing 1:50 plans on graph paper and sending them electronically. She could not be convinced it would all fit in the allocated space, until that is, I came up with the brilliant idea of making a full-scale mockup of the bathroom with the bath in the shed.

Using the form ply that came out of the footing pour, I laid out the bathroom outline on the shed floor. I then brought all the fittings from the container down to the shed on the back of a ute, and methodically laid it out on the floor.

Because our ensuite bathrooms are ‘walk through’, like a corridor between the living space and bedrooms, the layout has to allow free flow of movement….. and after moving things around to both suit Glenda’s sense of aesthetics and my needs to make the plumbing practical, we agreed on something. One good thing about technology, is that pictures are easily and conveniently sent now, facilitating decision-making no end… There’s no way we could do this 2,500km apart without smart phones!

Now that I had the bathroom all laid out in front of me, it became obvious that I had a golden opportunity to set out and put together the underslab plumbing right there and then…. No plumber would ever go to this much trouble to get it ‘perfect’; last time we did this, our plumber just ‘roughed it in’, and the pipes were not where I wanted them, requiring a lot of ‘fudging’ to solve issues………

Modern plastic plumbing fittings make this sort of work a cinch. It’s not rocket science either, all you need to remember is that water flows downhill! If you ever do anything like this, make sure you do it properly and use primer before gluing, because once it’s all buried in concrete, there’s no going back to fixing leaks!

Once finished, the whole thing looked like a spider…… and I carried it in one piece to the house site where I dug the shallow trenches in the gloop to drop the whole assembly to its correct level where it will be buried with crusher dust to within 100mm of the top of the slab that will go over the whole thing. Eventually.

I say eventually, because I now fear I have missed the boat when it comes to the weather… as you can see in the above photo, there’s water in my trenches, but worse, it’s getting cold with winter looming, and pouring concrete and cold don’t mix…..

Cold weather concrete can be classified as a period of more than three days where some specific conditions occur under certain temperatures. The American Concrete Institute under ACI 306 defines that concrete will be exposed to cold weather when the following conditions exist:

• The average daily air temperature is less than 5°C and,

• The air temperature is not greater than 10°C for more than one-half of any 24 hour period.

• Fresh concrete frozen during the first 24 hours can lose 50% of its potential 28-day strength!

This is not something you have to concern yourself with in Queensland, but here…….? coordinating the weather, a concretor, and the concrete trucks all together on the same day where the above conditions don’t occur could be very tricky. I may have to resign myself to having to wait until at least october……. which doesn’t exactly fill me with glee, but there you go, the owner builder’s lot is not known to be simple. I’ve watched enough Grand Designs to know this!

A good Friday’s pouring…..

If after finishing digging up the trenches for the retaining wall on Good Friday you had told me they would be full of concrete within a week…. I would have told you that you had sawdust for brains. Yet that is exactly what happened, but you need all your stars lining up.

The day after the big dig, I excitedly started laying steel bars in the trench, only to quickly realise there was no way known I could do this on my own. I’d lift one end of a 6m long bar to sit it on a chair, then walk to the other end to do the same, and the first end would fall off, entailing walking back and forth so many times that I reckon I’d walked over 150m just to set four bars down! Then, trying to tie the L shaped bars that reinforce the wall to those bars on my own simply proved nigh impossible, I would at least need one person to just hold the bar while I tied….. and being Easter, the chances of anyone helping were very slim indeed….. I started thinking that this job would easily take me a month, and I better get used to the idea.

 

Monday morning, Caleb, a friend’s teenaged son who lives locally and could use some spare cash, came to help me. Then, out of the blue, this American wwoofer who had contacted me some weeks before but didn’t know when he’d be in Tasmania rings me up, all excited and wanting to get stuck into some construction work…. “Your timing could not be better” I told him, and he was here by lunch time keen and eager. Best of all, he had way more concreting experience than I ever had, and he literally took over, becoming my project manager!

Nico is not only a great concretor, he’s also amazing company, and we’ve been chewing the fat every night over a well-earned cider. How this guy came into my life so unexpectedly just blows me away. Sometimes you’ve just got to get lucky……

Retaining walls work a bit like you standing in a strong wind…… think ‘back to the wind’, and your feet on the ground stopping you falling over. The pressure on your back wants to topple you over, but your toes strain against the wind’s force, all you need is a heel and toe joined to strong enough calf muscles to make sure the whole leg is stiff enough to avoid the embarrassment….. that’s exactly what the L bars do, and the concrete is the muscle.

I then came up with what I can only describe as a brilliant idea. The top of the footing has to have a layer of mesh no more than 50mm from the top surface. How to set this up so you can place it while busily pouring wet concrete? My solution was to tie it to the bars at the right height, and in just three places at the top so that one of us could just run around behind the formwork, cut those ties, and drop the mesh at its lower ‘hinge’. Then all I’d have to do is sink it into the concrete with the vibrator. Worked a treat…..

Formwork in place, upper reo mesh tied in place ready to be dropped after pouring

Once all the steel was in, the formwork to stop the concrete falling into the drain area had to be put up. I had bought 8’x4′ sheets of formply to cut into 300mm high boards and made a load of pointy timber stakes to hold them up with, but the stakes refused to penetrate the hard clay…  what to do? Nico said, ‘in the states we use metal form spikes’, but I’d never heard of them here. So I rang Nubco where I bought the steel, and they suggested 600mm star pickets that Bunnings sell. Sure enough, Bunnings had a whole lot in store at $5.80 each. I wasn’t keen on either driving that far let alone patronising Bunnings, so as we were approaching Huonville in the ute, I suggested Nico ring Mitre 10 there to see if they had some…. and they did. Not only that, they were on sale for $3.95 each (I needed 60 of them!), and I walked out with a bunch of screws, a new level and heavy hammer for less than what the pickets would have cost at Bunnings.  I’m on a roll!

 

Before we knew it, it looked very close to the job being finished, and I rang the concrete crowd and ordered the runny stuff…. I still can’t believe it all went so fast.

Tassie weather can sure put on a show…..  drop dead gorgeous dawn on pour day

We spent Friday morning finishing the formwork, tying up loose ends, adding chairs where necessary, and cleaning all the loose rubbish out of the trenches, which we finished nearly an hour and a half before the first truck arrived..

 

The whole West wing of the footing was poured from the first truck. The new concrete vibrator I bought myself worked a treat, most of the concrete finding its own level from being quite violently shaken.

The second truck arrived to pour the ‘pointy bit’ in the middle of the house, and that’s where the work on the hottest April day in over 50 years started in earnest….. because the chute was too short to reach, and poor old Nico had to rake and shovel the stuff into the corner while Caleb barrowed concrete from the truck to the edge of the trench, almost losing the wheelbarrow one time when he got too close, and the wheel fell into the wet concrete! Much frantic pulling and pushing from the three of us (while the truck driver never even lifted a finger) got the wheelbarrow back out again, but let me tell you we were all sweating! Swinging the heavy petrol powered vibrator at full arms length was hard yakka, but concrete waits for no man, and there was no stopping. And passing out wasn’t an option either….!

After it was all over, Nico said to me that sometimes you buy something, and you think to yourself, that was a good purchase….. but that concrete vibrator must be the best thing I ever bought according to him!

All done, 300mm thick footing poured…… what a job!

Needless to say, $3700 later it all ended well…… but we were all exhausted, and the entire affair reminded me of why I swore I’d never do it again after the last time.

In my last post where I mentioned this, I stated that if I didn’t save myself $10,000 by doing it myself I’d eat my hat. Well, at this stage it looks like I may well save closer to $20,000. Of course we still have to pour the slab over the top of all this work, but it’s hard to imagine how concretors can pay themselves as well as they do all the same…..

Time for a couple of days rest now…….

It’s all happening……

Last Friday, I was rudely awakened by a semi trailer outside my shed, at 6:30AM. I wasn’t expecting it before 10AM or so, but the driver had left the depot at 3:30AM, and ta-dah……. there he was! Loaded with nine out of the twenty four pallets of concrete blocks destined to go into the new build.

It’s amazing how quickly one is able to jump out of bed and throw on some clothes when duty calls…… Luckily, this driver had more than two brain cells to rub together; he worked out the best way to approach the tricky delivery, even though the rep who was here a week earlier to plan this, never told him anything about our place…….

Altogether, there are thirty tonnes of blocks to be delivered, and it could not all be done in one go apparently. The delivery alone is costing us $1000….. buying anything when you’re building always involves lots of zeroes! Last week I bought $4000 worth of Hoop Pine plywood from South East Queensland for the ceiling. It’s the closest thing to white wood I’ve ever seen. Amazingly, the young man who served me worked at the Noosa office where I used to buy plywood for the last house… small world!

The way the pallets are unloaded off the semi is really clever. They use a three wheeled (and three wheel drive) forklift which permanently resides on the truck. To get it off, it lifts itself off the tray, slides backwards until clear of the trailer, then lowers itself to the ground….. I had no idea of whether these gadgets were able to be driven 500 metres return on a dirt road or not, but that was no issue.

Included in the load were sixty litres (with more to come I think) of waterproofing additive for the mortar that ‘glues’ the blocks together…. while discussing this with the driver, he then informed me that the entire load of blocks has this stuff mixed in at the time of manufacture. Because they are destined for a retaining wall, which needs to be as waterproof as possible, for obvious reasons in our case, Island Blocks decided to include this in the order without me knowing….. We don’t want water coming into the house in a deluge like the one we had last week, so I am mighty pleased with this. Amazingly, these blocks cost us less than the ones we bought in Gympie all those years ago, even though they were specially made for us; it’s a colour they no longer market. We chose it, because it was the nearest thing to the blocks we had at Mon Abri, which we dearly wanted to reproduce as much as possible….

Nine down, fifteen to go…..

To test this waterproofing feature, I decided to put some water on a block and see if it beaded instead of the usual absorption like a sponge normal concrete displays… and indeed, the concrete is waterproof!

How I wish I had known this was possible when I built the last house…. if such a service was at all possible then.

Tomorrow afternoon, a local concretor is coming for a visit to discuss the footings and slab…….. Will I be out of the ground before Christmas? Now that would be one hell of a Chrissy present!

 

 

Wind turbines hit limits to growth before 50% wind power penetration

Here is another blogpost clearly explaining the limits of renewable energy using mathematics… you know, that discipline you cannot argue with?  Originally published at Energy Skeptic dot com where loads of other interesting stuff on energy matters are accessible.  I highly recommend that site to all my DTM followers…..

Material requirements of 50% wind power in the USA hit limits to growth

Wind turbines can’t be made forever because natural gas, coal, oil, uranium (thorium), neodymium, and other energy resources and minerals needed for wind turbines are finite, and the energy to recycle is limited.

Oil, the master resource, coal, and natural gas are required to make the millions of tons of steel, copper, fiberglass, plastic, epoxy, and concrete as well as deliver and maintain hundreds of thousands of wind turbines providing 50% or more of electricity as fossil fuels decline.

2,029,104,500 MWh = Wind power to equal 50% of annual electricity generation in 2013 (4,058,209,000 MWh / 2)
5,606.4 MWh power per year per 2 MW turbine (2 MW * .32 national average capacity * 24 hours * 365 days) summer
361,926 Number of 2 MW turbines required (2,029,104,500 MWh / 5,606.4 MWh) You’d need 531,318 wind turbines to allow for the lowest capacity of .218 in august 2013 (EIA).
Area required 104,586 square miles — the entire state of Colorado (361,926 2 MW turbines * 2 * 92.47 acres per MW) (AWEO)
Materials per 2 MW turbine in short tons: 265.5 steel, 1025.5 concrete, 39 iron, 3 copper, 24.3 fiberglass, 10 epoxy, 2.4 plastic (average of Elsam, Guezuraga), and rare earth metals neodymium 800 pounds, dysprosium 130 pounds (ED).
Total amount of materials needed for 361,926 wind turbines in short tons: 96,091,353 steel, 371,155,113 concrete containing 74,213,022 cement (20% of concrete), 144,770 tons neodymium, 23,525 dysprosium, 14,115,114 iron, 1,085,778 copper, 8,794,802 fiberglass, 3,619,260 epoxy, 868,622 plastic
Annual steel production world-wide 1,833,395 tons in 2014 (worldsteel) = 52 years of world steel production (96,092,353 / 1,833,395)
Annual cement production USA 142,464,000 tons (USGS) = 52% of annual cement production (roads, buildings, sewers, and other infrastructure will suffer)
Neodymium world production is 7,840 tons/year. Windmill turbines would require 18.5 years of production. Dysprosium production is 112 tons/year requiring 210 years of dysprosium production (ED).
Fossil energy required to build windmills: The vehicles that mine iron ore run on diesel. Vehicles and equipment that process iron ore are mostly made of steel. Iron and steel are made by blast furnace or direct reduction using coal or natural gas. Imported steel arrives on ships burning diesel. Cement (20% of concrete) is made in a kiln using coal or natural gas. Fiberglass, epoxy, and plastic are made out of petroleum.

If the plan is to build 150% wind power to increase the capacity credit for reliable power, or immigration and birth rates increase the US population to 1 billion as expected in census projections by 2100, triple all of the above figures. Since the rest of the world also wants wind power and have increasing populations, perhaps multiplying by 10 would be more realistic, or by 12, since many material requirements were left out (i.e. transmission / distribution lines and towers, substations, roads, etc).

ED. 2015. Neodymium. Dysprosium. ElementsDatabase.org

EIA. 2015. Table 6.7.B. Capacity Factors for Utility Scale Generators Not Primarily Using Fossil Fuels, January 2008-November 2014. U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Prieto, P. A. 21 Oct 2008. Solar + Wind in Spain/ World. Closing the growing gap? ASPO International conference.

USGS. 2011. Cement production. United States Geological Society. 127,200,000 long tons converted to 142,464,000 short tons (2,000 lbs)

Worldsteel. 2014. Monthly Crude Steel Production 2014. Pig iron 2013 + DR 2013. worldsteel.org (converted from long to short tons).

Prove This Wrong

John Weber

Another guest post by John Weber..  I have already pronounced more than once that building ‘renewables’ involves intensive use of fossil fuels, the emissions from which the machines made to generate this renewable energy can never be removed by the machines.  So while they may reduce the emissions that might have been caused by using fossil energy to generate this electricity, the machines do not remove them.  In fact, it doesn’t matter how many wind turbines are erected, the fossil energy use just keeps growing…..  and if we decided tomorrow to shut down all fossil fuel use (a darn good idea…), then not one more wind turbine would be erected, and not one more solar panel would be built.  It’s really that simple……..

 

It would be elegant if wind and solar energy capturing devices could actually maintain a modicum of the wonderfully rich lifestyles many of us live.  I believe this is a false dream and that BAU (business as usual) is not sustainable or “green” nor really desirable for the future of the earth or even our species.

Prove This Wrong

Many people believe wind and solar energy capturing devices can replace a substantial percentage if not all of our fossil fuel usage. Below you will find pictures and charts detailing the necessity of the fossil fuel supply system and the massive industrial infrastructure in this “renewable” dream.

Wind, Water, and Solar Power for the World

Nix nuclear. Chuck coal. Rebuff biofuel. All we need is the wind, the water, and the sun

By Mark Delucchi/ SEPTEMBER 2011

“We don’t need nuclear power, coal, or biofuels. We can get 100 percent of our energy from wind, water, and solar (WWS) power. And we can do it today— efficiently, reliably, safely, sustainably, and economically.  We can get to this WWS world by simply building a lot of new systems for the production, transmission, and use of energy. One scenario that Stanford engineering professor Mark Jacobson and I developed, projecting to 2030, includes: 3.8 million wind turbines, 5 megawatts each, supplying 50 percent of the projected total global power demand.”

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/wind-water-and-solar-power-for-the-world/

Mark Z. Jacobson Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University was coauthor of another article. It can be found in Scientific America – “A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030”.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030/

They proposed that starting in 2012, 50% of the worlds needs could be supplied by 3,800,000 five megawatt wind capturing devices to be installed by 2030. Here are the numbers:

3,800,000 5 megawatts each supply 50% of the world’s energy needs in 18 years

THIS MEANS

211,111.11 Machines a year

578.39 Machines a day for 18 years

24.10 Machines each hour each day for 18 years EACH ONE INSTALLED EACH DAY

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/wind-water-and-solar-power-for-the-world/0

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030

I am choosing wind energy capturing devices because they have a higher Energy Return on Energy Invested than solar energy capturing devices. I continually use the phrase “capturing devices” for what are usually called solar panels and wind machines because these are devices that capture the sun or wind energy. It is misleading to not realize they require energy and natural resources.

Let me cut right to the results of this study. The base of this 2.5 megawatt turbine in the pictures that follow (half the megawatts in the Jacobson/Delucchi study) used 45 tons of rebar and 630 cubic yards of cement. This computes in barrels of oil and in tons of CO₂ for each base:

For the Concrete

478.8 Barrels of oil in 630 yards of concrete.

409.5 Tons of CO₂ released for 630 yards of concrete.

For the Rebar

Taking a conservative 3 barrels of oil per ton the rebar would require 135 barrels of oil for the base of the 2.5 MW Turbine.

89 tons of C0₂ released for 45 tons of steel for the base.

All Together

The concrete and steel together for one base use

613 barrels of oil for each base alone.

Each base release 498 tons of CO₂

(A barrel of oil is 42 gallons – or 160L)

Before looking at two of the energy requirements to install these 3,800,000 machines here are some interesting pictures of installing a wind energy capturing device from http://www.cashton.com/North_Wind_Turbine_Const-DM-CS-SB-2-reduced-in-size.pdf .

The machine we are looking at is only 2.5 MW turbine not the larger 5 MW proposed by Jacobson and Delucchi.

The turbines, each standing 485 feet tall and weighing 2,000 tons

The project utilizes 2.5 MW turbines on 100 metre towers.

(http://www.kansasenergy.org/wind_projects_WI.htm)

The pictures clearly illustrate that the fossil fuel supply system and a vast industrial infrastructure support the manufacture and installation of these wind energy capturing devices. The tons of rebar and the yards of concrete offer a chance to look at the energy requirements for both. It is also important to point out that all the equipment used to install the turbines also have the fossil fuel supply system and the massive industrial infrastructure supporting them.

In researching this, the information for concrete was more definite than the range of energy required to make rebar.

_________________________________________________________________________________

REBAR

“Common rebar is made of unfinished tempered steel, making it susceptible to rusting. Normally the concrete cover is able to provide a pH value higher than 12 avoiding the corrosion reaction. Too little concrete cover can compromise this guard through carbonation from the surface, and salt penetration. Too much concrete cover can cause bigger crack widths which also compromises the local guard. As rust takes up greater volume than the steel from which it was formed, it causes severe internal pressure on the surrounding concrete, leading to cracking, spalling, and ultimately, structural failure. This phenomenon is known as oxide jacking. This is a particular problem where the concrete is exposed to salt water, as in bridges where salt is applied to roadways in winter, or in marine applications. Uncoated, corrosion-resistant low carbon/chromium (microcomposite), epoxy-coated, galvanized or stainless steel rebars may be employed in these situations at greater initial expense, but significantly lower expense over the service life of the project. Extra care is taken during the transport, fabrication, handling, installation, and concrete placement process when working with epoxy-coated rebar, because damage will reduce the long-term corrosion resistance of these bars.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebar

  

“Under the most ideal circumstances, the energy required to produce solid iron from iron oxide can never be less than 7 million Btu per ton (MMBtu/ton). Since the energy required to melt iron under the most ideal circumstances is about 1 MMBtu/ton, the inherent thermodynamic advantage of making liquid steel from scrap rather than from iron ore is about 6 MMBtu/ton. When process heat losses are included, the advantage falls in the range of 9 to 14 MMBtu/ton. . . . current total energy requirements for the pro- Petroleum provides only a small amount of enduction of finished steel products in different pIants and countries from iron ore range from 25 to 35 MMBtu/net ton.”

https://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk3/1983/8312/831210.PD

 

http://www.eurosfaire.prd.fr/7pc/documents/1355390994_jrc_green_steel.pdf

The range above supports the 25 to 35 MMBtu/net ton. With various iron making processes, iron has a range of Btus per ton.   Converted to barrels of oil the range is 2.17 to 4.83 barrels of oil per ton of rebar.

Taking a conservative 3 barrels of oil per ton the rebar would require 135 barrels of oil for the base of the 2.5 MW Turbine.

On average, 1.8 tonnes of CO₂ are emitted for every tonne of steel produced.

http://www.worldsteel.org/publications/position-papers/Steel-s-contribution-to-a-low-carbon-future.html

This means 1.98 tons of C0₂ emitted for every ton of steel produced.

IRON ORE PROCESS

CEMENT ENERGY

Multiply 1.10231 to convert tonnes to tons

One yard of concrete equals two tons

http://www.cemexusa.com/ProductsServices/ReadyMixConcreteFaq.aspx

Two tons equals 1.81437 tonnes

4,426,832.62 Btus in a yard of concrete

5,800,000 Btus per barrel of oil

0.76 barrels of oil in a yard of concrete

32.06 gallons of oil in a yard of concrete

0.65 tons of CO₂ per yard of concrete

478.8 Barrels of oil in 630 yards of concrete

20,195.52 Gallons of oil in 630 yards of concrete

409.5 Tons of CO₂ per 630 yards of concrete

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/manufacturing/industries_technologies/imf/pdfs/eeroci_dec03a.pdf

THE CONCRETE PROCESS

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/manufacturing/industries_technologies/imf/pdfs/eeroci_dec03a.pdf

On-site energy values are based on actual process measurements taken within a facility. These measurements are valuable because the on-site values are the benchmarks that industry uses to compare performance between processes, facilities, and companies. On-site measurements, however, do not account for the complete energy and environmental impact of manufacturing a product. A full accounting of the impact of manufacturing must include the energy used to produce the electricity, the fuels, and the raw materials used on-site. These “secondary” or “tacit” additions are very important from a regional, national, and global energy and environment perspective.

Normal weight concrete weighs about 4000 lb. per cubic yard. Lightweight concrete weighs about 3000 lb. per cubic yard. If a truck is carrying 10 cubic yards, then the weight of the concrete is approximately 40,000 lb.

The tonne (British and SI; SI symbol: t) or metric ton (American) is a non-SI metric unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms;^[ it is thus equivalent to one megagram (Mg). 1000 kilograms is equivalent to approximately 2 204.6 pounds,

 

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/manufacturing/industries_technologies/imf/pdfs/eeroci_dec03a.pdf

It is important to realize we have only looked at the energy for the concrete and rebar for the base of a 2.5 MMwatt turbine. Behind this device and most sun and wind capturing devices are a global system of providing energy and materials. And this support is further supported.   Here is one mining truck among a worldwide fleet of trucks that also must be manufactured. It is like a thread on a knitted sweater that when you pull it thinking you will get a small piece, you end up with a whole ball of yarn.

YOU DO THE MATHS