L4sBotThe World’s Largest Wind Turbine Has Been Switched On
TroyCaveat: I’m pro wind if it gets us off fossil fuels. It’s better than doing nothing and perfect cannot be the enemy of good enough (for now).
That said: in the late 1890s and early 1900s, scientists already knew about fossil fuels and greenhouse gasses and they didn’t speak up loud enough.
Take the idea of wind energy and project it’s growth a hundred years. From a pure physics perspective, when harvesting wind energy, you must steal kinetic energy from the wind. What happens when we’re harvesting say, 1% of all the kinetic energy of the atmosphere. Or 10%. Surely that will have major weather and climate effects. Or some far future anime sci fi outcome where we’ve captured 100% of the kinetic energy of the atmosphere and no air is moving except through turbines…
This turbine is very cool. What else should we be doing to prevent wind power from turning into the next generation’s climate disaster?
VeedemRenewables is plural for a reason. We need to combine multiple sources just as we have done with fossil fuels. Solar, geothermal, ocean currents, etc all compliment wind nicely.
The real challenge is energy storage. Fossil fuels are effectively batteries until we expend them.
KelsenellenelvialAlso distribution. It’s relatively cheap to transport energy in the form of hydrocarbon type fuels because most of your fuel(oxygen in the atmosphere), is in abundant supply pretty much everywhere. Solar has huge variation in seasonal production at higher latitudes, geothermal, hydro, and wind power tend to be most economical in places where the geology/topology is favourable.
Valid point and not one that I had considered. Thanks.