Disillusioned JW:
I notice that you made the claim of "By the way, one wind turbine cannot generate the amount of energy in its lifetime that was used in its manufacture." I am not convinced that one wind turbine cannot generate the amount of energy in its lifetime that was used in its manufacture.
Im glad you noticed this too. Of course its a false claim. The guy quoted was taken completely out of context and Vidqun got this quote from his favourite source of scientific facts - Facebook memes.
Heres the whole story:
https://fullfact.org/online/wind-turbines-energy/
For anyone who cant be bothered clicking on the URL:
On his blog Mr Homer-Dixon writes: “The poster is fraudulent. I didn’t write the text, the text itself is selectively quoted, and the argument it makes, taken in isolation, is meaningless.”
The full quote from the book is:
“The concept of net energy must also be applied to renewable sources of energy, such as windmills and photovoltaics. A two-megawatt windmill contains 260 tonnes of steel requiring 170 tonnes of coking coal and 300 tonnes of iron ore, all mined, transported and produced by hydrocarbons. The question is: how long must a windmill generate energy before it creates more energy than it took to build it? At a good wind site, the energy payback day could be in three years or less; in a poor location, energy payback may be never. That is, a windmill could spin until it falls apart and never generate as much energy as was invested in building it.”
So Mr Hughes was saying only that placing windmills in bad places may mean they don’t generate enough energy to “pay back” the energy it cost to produce them, not that all turbines will fail to do so.
Mr Homer-Dixon adds, “it would be pointless to put wind turbines in poor locations”.
