Wind Farms will Create More Greenhouse Gases than they save, say scientists

Scottish government-funded researchers from Aberdeen University will publish a report later this year stating that British wind farms create more carbon dioxide greenhouse gases than they save.

British peatland stores at least 3.2 billion tons of carbon, making it by far the country’s most important carbon sink and among the most important in the world.

But peat is also a massive store of carbon, described as Europe’s equivalent of the tropical rainforest. Wind farms, and the miles of new roads and tracks needed to service them, damage or destroy the peat and cause significant loss of carbon to the atmosphere, where it contributes to climate change.

...more than half of all British onshore wind development, current and planned, is on peat soils.

The Telegraph

Peatland stores a huge amount of carbon but the effects of building wind farms on it appears to have been overlooked by policy makers.

Richard Lindsay of the University of East London, said: “If we are concerned about CO2, we shouldn’t be worrying first about the rainforests, we should be worrying about peatlands.

“The world’s peatlands have four times the amount of carbon than all the world’s rainforests. But they are a Cinderella habitat, completely invisible to decision- makers.”

The Telegraph

I'm not terribly surprised by this.

No one wants to build them unless they receive huge taxpayer subsidies. The whole operation is subsided by the taxpayer from start to finish.

David Cameron's wife's father receives £350,000 a year for the 8 eight turbines constructed on his land at Bagmoor.

Link

reply to post by ollncasino

Misleading and inaccurate thread title.

Seems to revolve around the building on and disturbing of peat soils as opposed to wind farms in general.

Plenty of land worldwide other than peat.

A concern only if one buys into the idea of CO2 causing climate change.

Politicians getting it wrong, thats hardly a surprise.

But there are plenty of other sources of clean, renewable, limitless energy: solar, tidal and geo-thermal.

Of-course we could continue to build nuclear power plants which produce tons (literally) of radioactive waste and are always run the risk of a melt down.

Originally posted by gladtobehere

Misleading and inaccurate thread title.

Not if you read the article.

Half of British wind farms are built on peat-land. If the objective was to prevent 'global warming' then it has been an expensive white elephant.

Wind farms will create more carbon dioxide, say scientists

Are you trying to bury an inconvenient truth?

Originally posted by gladtobehere

But there are plenty of other sources of clean, renewable, limitless energy: solar, tidal and geo-thermal.

But none of them pay their way, do they?

Wind farm subsidies to top £1bn this year

reply to post by ollncasino


I guess they better shut down the commercial peat bogs too.

Originally posted by Chadwickus
reply to post by ollncasino

 

I guess they better shut down the commercial peat bogs too.

Don't give the global warming lobby any more ideas!


Peatland destruction is releasing vast amounts of CO2 - New Scientist

Billions of tons of carbon sequestered in the world's peat bogs could be released into the atmosphere in the coming decades as a result of global warming, according to a new analysis.

...release of even a small percentage of the carbon locked away in the world's peat bogs would dwarf emissions of manmade carbon, scientists at Harvard University, Worcester State College, and the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology write in the current issue of the journal Nature Geoscience.

Global Warming Predicted To Hasten Carbon Release From Peat Bogs

The Global warming bandwagon have already pointed out the dangers of carbon being released from peatland.

Unless they are building wind farms on top of it. Then it doesn't matter presumably.

What about Dover? Plenty of wind there.... Pretty sure it is Peatbog free too...

Originally posted by magma
What about Dover? Plenty of wind there.... Pretty sure it is Peatbog free too...

What an eyesore.

They are ugly wind farms. Really ugly.

reply to post by ollncasino



I get it. It can save the environment only if it can meet with not being an eyesore. ....

What about a statement to the world. Look what we did.. We can run most of our country on wind.

Nah.. Tuck em down in the bogs, out of mind out of site.

Originally posted by magma

I get it. It can save the environment only if it can meet with not being an eyesore. ....

What about a statement to the world. Look what we did.. We can run most of our country on wind.

But we can't run most of our country on wind. Wind farms don't save the environment.

Originally posted by magma

Nah.. Tuck em down in the bogs, out of mind out of site.

Better still, get rid of the expensive monstrosities all together.

Originally posted by ollncasino
Scottish government-funded researchers from Aberdeen University will publish a report later this year stating that British wind farms create more carbon dioxide greenhouse gases than they save.

I guess I'll have to wait until the research is published to read it. It sounds like it's published in a respectable journal, but still I'm skeptical of the claims.

I'm not for or against wind power. If it makes economic sense, and doesn't destroy the environment, then why not, but if environmental problems are not accounted for, then they should be. In this case the equation has changed regarding greenhouse gas emissions for power generation sources other than wind, according to the article, so that's part of the problem with the prior analyses. So I don't think we can say they didn't consider it, rather, the article says the considerations have changed.

There are certainly many places in the world where wind turbines can be constructed not on peat bogs, so this seems to be primarily a UK related issue rather than a global wind power issue. I will say I'm not crazy about the government subsidies...it's probably better to let things that pay for themselves without subsidies succeed, than to force uneconomical projects into use.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

I'm not for or against wind power. If it makes economic sense, and doesn't destroy the environment, then why not

I agree.

However, the following facts cited by a group fighting the expansion of wind farms suggest that wind power may not be all it is cracked up to be.

• In certain conditions, wind turbines actually consume electricity. To protect them from damage from cold or warm spells, the machinery is heated or cooled. It is not unheard of for the daily net contribution of all the UK’s wind turbines to be negative.

• Between 2002 and 20120, the UK gave £5.6 billion in subsidies to the wind energy sector. That amounts to nearly £200,000 per worker in the sector. The government claim that their ‘Green Deal’ and other green policies will create jobs, but the evidence shows that their plans are amongst the least effective and most expensive make-work schemes ever conceived.

• The average wind turbine produces energy 75 per cent of the time. However, because wind speeds vary, a turbine’s output also varies between nothing and its capacity. The average wind turbine only produces 28 percent of its total capacity.

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reply to post by ollncasino


UK has been running on wind for centuries

Ok, forget wind go nuclear.

reply to post by ollncasino



They do need to be located in windy areas to be efficient. Maybe the UK is just not suitable for wind farms. Unless it is in Dover, which you do not like.

One has to admit this, before wind power generation began to be implemented in a larger way, the environmentalists were pushing for their increased use.

Now that it is happening, there seem to be a ton of overlooked reasons for the environmentalists to oppose them. Here in the Pennsylvania, a wind farm was opposed because it was feared that birds would fly into the rotors.

I think that some environmentalists will not be happy unless the human race goes extinct.

Originally posted by butcherguy

One has to admit this, before wind power generation began to be implemented in a larger way, the environmentalists were pushing for their increased use.

Now that it is happening, there seem to be a ton of overlooked reasons for the environmentalists to oppose them.

Not only that. It is the sheer cost of subsiding them as well.

In the UK it looks as if the wind farm industry has evolved into a tax payer subsided gravy train.

Don't get me wrong. Generating power without destroying the environment should be everyone's priority. I'm just not sure that wind farms are the way to go.

Originally posted by magma

They do need to be located in windy areas to be efficient. Maybe the UK is just not suitable for wind farms. Unless it is in Dover, which you do not like.

Would you like to locate a wind farm in your front garden, provided it was windy enough?

I would. With the subsidy from the taxpayer, I would never need to work again. Just under £44,000 a turbine? I would say yes to that.

reply to post by ollncasino


They are pretty noisy. But on the cliffs of dover nobody would hear. So not in my garden but down the road in someone elses garden would work.( Kidding)

we should just let NK detonate a nuke over the US and all the other countries dependent on electricity and let the EMP that is created send us all back to the 1500s, or should we just keep using nuclear power and be slowly poisoned to death from leaking radiation,.