In Part I of this series, we took a look at the many and varied uses to which petroleum - oil - is put, and how our comfortable, modern lifestyle is dependent on this substance, above all things. This is the substance that the climate scolds and environmental activists, few of whom actually live out in the environment, want us to stop seeking out and extracting. That's because they don't understand how irreplaceable oil is in our lifestyles.
These same climate scolds and environmental activists are generally big advocates for "green" energy sources, like solar panels and windmills. Again, that's because they don't understand the whole cost of these alternatives. Wind power, in particular, is horrendously expensive, in material cost, in practical cost, and in environmental cost.
Read More: Fossil Fuels v. Green Energy, Part I - Oil Is Everywhere
First, the material cost; it takes a tremendous amount of materials to build just one of these windmills. In fact, it takes roughly 1688 tons of materials, most of which are moved to the site by diesel-powered conveyances, as well as the tremendous job of just putting one of these things up - just one.
Each windmill in this video:
- Takes 3 weeks to build from excavation to operation
- requires 40 to 100 geo-piers installed for stability, weight unknown
- Excavate 10 feet deep 100 feet wide
- Set 96,000 pounds of reinforcing steel rebar = 48 tons
- 53 concrete trucks pour foundations. If each truck can haul 8 cubic yards at 2538 lbs/yard * 53 = 1,076,112 pounds = 538 tons. In the second video, wind turbine farm from scratch, 30 to 240 cubic meters of concrete are poured (Delbert 2020). A cubic meter weighs 2,400 kg, so 72,000 kg / 152,738 lbs / 36 short tons to 576,000 kg / 1,269,863 pounds / 634 short tons
- Move 1,500 cubic yards of soil @ 2,200 lbs per cubic yard = 3.3 million pounds = 1,650 tons
- 3 blades : each 173 feet long and 27,000 pounds for 81,000 pounds = 40.5 tons
- 8 truckloads to deliver turbine components
- Nacelle: weight 181,000 lbs = 90.5 tons with the generator, gearbox, and rotor shaft
- Hub: weight unknown
- Base tower height 53 feet 11 inches, weight 97,459 lbs = 48.7 tons
- Mid tower height 84 feet 6 inches, weight 115,587 lbs = 57.8 tons
- Top tower height 119 feet, weight 104,167 lbs = 52 tons
- Final tower height to blade tip when fully extended 442 feet
That's for a usable lifespan of roughly 20 years, following which the whole shebang must be replaced. And as for the number of windmills required to replace fossil fuel and nuclear capacity? That's even worse.
You’d need 32,850 wind turbines to replace the Cubic Mile of Oil consumed globally every year, and a grand total of 1,642,000 turbines to replace oil over the next 50 years, which may be conservative given that the wind isn’t blowing all the time so that triple or more would be needed on a national grid with massive energy storage batteries.
Now, there's a practical cost as well; every single one of the resources put into windmills that will never break even is needed elsewhere. Every ton of concrete, every pound of aluminum, steel, and carbon fiber, every foot of copper wiring, every ounce of rare earth metals, everything - all poured down a "green energy" rathole that will never pay off.
Here's the thing: Much of these materials, many of which have a considerable cost to make and transport, has been outsourced. Many others could best be used elsewhere. Take concrete, which has been an essential building material since the time of the Romans; it comes with considerable fiscal and environmental costs.
Take cement, for instance. The biggest producer of the essential raw material for construction is, unsurprisingly, China, followed by India, with Vietnam a distant third in terms of annual production. That is not all, however. Within the top 10 of cement producers globally, there is no single European country. The only Western country on the list is the United States, at number four, with an annual production of 90 million tons for 2023, compared with 2,000 million tons for China.
And it turns out the production of things like cement move a considerable amount of emissions overseas:
That detail is the fact that all the industries that are being touted by transition advocates require vast amounts of the commodities and products that those hydrocarbon-dependent countries produce, using the cheap energy that coal generates. Wind turbines, for instance, require substantial amounts of cement for their foundations and equally substantial amounts of steel. So, in a rather literal sense, it is the energy transition itself that is partially fueling the hydrocarbon-dependent economies in Asia, Africa, and South America.
We might note as well that traditional fossil fuels are consumed in moving every single ounce of every single one of these materials.
There are other, rather grisly environmental costs, like the uncounted deaths of large raptors, another topic I covered here recently:
Read More: Grisly Eagle Death at Obama-Backed Wind Site Now Sparking Federal Fine
Knowledge is power, as the old saying goes, and it is knowledge - that is to say, an understanding and acceptance of hard facts, regardless of previous opinions, that should and must drive energy policy. The more we look at alternative, "green" energy sources, like wind and solar, the less sense they make. They are useful tools for niche applications, and that's all; they never can and never will replace our traditional sources.
If the climate scolds and environmental activists who push these technologies were truly concerned about carbon emissions and reliable, clean electricity, they would be pushing for the development of modern nuclear power. They aren't - and that tells you all you need to know about their agenda.
