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. And I almost forgot the many pilot and escort vehicles per convoy…….
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.
Damn the Matrix 