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So what’s the carbon foot print of a wind turbine with 45 tons of rebar & 481m3 of concrete? Andy’s Rant 4 August 2014 Its carbon footprint is massive – try 241.85 tons of CO2. Here’s the breakdown of the CO2 numbers. To create a 1,000 Kg of pig iron, you start with 1,800 Kg of iron ore, 900 Kg of coking coal 450 Kg of limestone. The blast furnace consumes 4,500 Kg of air. The temperature at the core of the blast furnace reaches nearly 1,600 degrees C (about 3,000 degrees F). The pig iron is then transferred to the basic oxygen furnace to make steel. 1,350 Kg of CO2 is emitted per 1,000 Kg pig iron produced. A further 1,460 Kg CO2 is emitted per 1,000 Kg of Steel produced so all up 2,810 Kg CO2 is emitted. 45 tons of rebar (steel) are required so that equals 126.45 tons of CO2 are emitted. To create a 1,000 Kg of Portland cement, calcium carbonate (60%), silicon (20%), aluminium (10%), iron (10%) and very small amounts of other ingredients are heated in a large kiln to over 1,500 degrees C to convert the raw materials into clinker. The clinker is then interground with other ingredients to produce the final cement product. When cement is mixed with water, sand and gravel forms the rock-like mass know as concrete. An average of 927 Kg of CO2 is emitted per 1,000 Kg of Portland cement. On average, concrete has 10% cement, with the balance being gravel (41%), sand (25%), water (18%) and air (6%). One cubic metre of concrete weighs approx. 2,400 Kg so approx. 240 Kg of CO2 is emitted for every cubic metre. 481m3 of concrete are required so that equals 115.4 tons of CO2 are emitted. Now I have not included the emissions of the mining of the raw materials or the transportation of the fabricated materials to the turbine site so the emission calculation above would be on the low end at best. Extra stats about wind turbines you may not know about: The average towering wind turbine being installed around beautiful Australia right now is over 80 metres in height (nearly the same height as the pylons on the Sydney Harbour Bridge). The rotor assembly for one turbine – that’s the blades and hub – weighs over 22,000 Kg and the nacelle, which contains the generator components, weighs over 52,000 Kg. All this stands on a concrete base constructed from 45,000 Kg of reinforcing rebar which also contains over 481 cubic metres of concrete (that’s over 481,000 litres of concrete – about 20% of the volume of an Olympic swimming pool). https://stopthesethings.com/2014/08/16/how-much-co2-gets-emitted-to-build-a-wind-turbine/

https://i.ibb.co/r525L58/windmill.jpg

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Each turbine blade is made of glass fibre reinforced plastics, (GRP), i.e. glass fibre reinforced polyester or epoxy and on average each turbine blade weighs around 7,000 Kg each. Each turbine has three blades so there’s 21,000 Kgs of GRP and each blade can be as long as 50 metres. A typical wind farm of 20 turbines can extend over 101 hectares of land (1.01 Km2). Each and every wind turbine has a magnet made of a metal called neodymium. There are 2,500 Kg of it in each of the behemoths that have just gone up around Australia. The mining and refining of neodymium is so dirty and toxic – involving repeated boiling in acid, with radioactive thorium as a waste product – that only one country does it – China. (See our posts here and here). All this for an intermittent highly unreliable energy source. And I haven’t even considered the manufacture of the thousands of pylons and tens of thousands of kilometres of transmission wire needed to get the power to the grid. And what about the land space needed to house thousands of these bird chomping death machines? You see, renewables like wind turbines will incur far more carbon dioxide emissions in their manufacture and installation than what their operational life will ever save. Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t the “cure” of using wind turbines sound worse than the problem? A bit like amputating your leg to “cure” your in-growing toe nail? Metal emission stats from page 25 from the 2006 IPCC Chapter 4 Metal Industry Emissions report. Cement and concrete stats from page 6 & 7 from the 2012 NRMCA Concrete CO2 Fact Sheet. Andy’s Rant https://stopthesethings.com/2014/08/16/how-much-co2-gets-emitted-to-build-a-wind-turbine/

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Its carbon footprint is massive – try 241.85 tons of CO2.

Convert US tons to metric Tonnes

1 US Ton = 0.907185 Metric Tonnes

Therefore 241.85 Tons of carbon = 219.4 Tonnes of carbon

To convert to CO2 multiply by 3.67

Therefore 219.4 * 3.67 = 805 Tonnes of CO2

To manufacture one wind mill it takes

805 Tonnes of CO2

and that is on the minimum side, would be more for sure.

how much rebar, how many tons of concrete, how much fibre glass or plastic is used to make a coal powered power plant?

once you've worked that out do the same for the heavy machinery needed to get the coal out, to transport it, store the coal etc etc etc.

John Smith wrote on Dec 13^th, 2020 at 11:05am:

how much rebar, how many tons of concrete, how much fibre glass or plastic is used to make a coal powered power plant? once you've worked that out do the same for the heavy machinery needed to get the coal out, to transport it, store the coal etc etc etc.

The point is green energy is not so green after all.

It has  a carbon footprint.

One wind mill turbine - generator = 805 Tonnes of CO2 to manufacture

Now times that by the number of windmill turbine - generators in Australia..?


https://i.ibb.co/F0XwRGb/windmillsoz.jpg

https://i.ibb.co/Dp7Ng1n/wmoz.jpg

Not to mention that wind is an extremely inefficient source of power, and its visual pollution is off the scale.

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BTW we haven't talked about storage capacity and the carbon footprint it produces not to mention the pollution at the end of its life.

Windmills have the capacity to change the Earths wind jet stream.

They also kill hundreds of thousands of birds every year.

Ajax wrote on Dec 13^th, 2020 at 11:16am:

The point is green energy is not so green after all. It has  a carbon footprint.

everything man made has a carbon footprint if you look back far enough in the process. Green energy is much cleaner and less polluting than coal fired power plants.

No amount of cherry picking or obfuscation will change that.

John Smith wrote on Dec 13^th, 2020 at 11:05am:

how much rebar, how many tons of concrete, how much fibre glass or plastic is used to make a coal powered power plant?

You tell us petal. Seeing as you brought it up you should know. ;)


John Smith wrote on Dec 13^th, 2020 at 11:05am:

once you've worked that out do the same for the heavy machinery needed to get the coal out, to transport it, store the coal etc etc etc.

Hmm. Is that like transporting the tower sections to site, the batteries (and their maintenance) for the backup when the wind fails.

And then of course there are other things.

"According to the Northwest Mining Association, A single 3-MW wind turbine needs:

    335 tons of steel
    4.7 tons of copper
    1,200 tons of concrete (cement and aggregates) [~600 yards]
    3 tons of aluminum
    2 tons of rare earth elements
    aluminum
    zinc
    molybdenum"

https://www.wind-watch.org/documents/metals-and-minerals-in-wind-turbines/


That's ONE generator. The new ones are about 7 MW.

The Cooper's Gap windfarm is 453 MW.

"Copper plays an important role in these renewable energy systems.[3][4][5][6][7] In fact, copper usage averages up to five times more in renewable energy systems than in traditional power generation, such as fossil fuel and nuclear.[8]"

Source: wiki.

Edit: "In 2017, the World Bank released a little-noticed report that offered the first comprehensive look at this question. It models the increase in material extraction that would be required to build enough solar and wind utilities to produce an annual output of about 7 terawatts of electricity by 2050. That’s enough to power roughly half of the global economy. By doubling the World Bank figures, we can estimate what it will take to get all the way to zero emissions—and the results are staggering: 34 million metric tons of copper, 40 million tons of lead, 50 million tons of zinc, 162 million tons of aluminum, and no less than 4.8 billion tons of iron.

In some cases, the transition to renewables will require a massive increase over existing levels of extraction. For neodymium — an essential element in wind turbines — extraction will need to rise by nearly 35 percent over current levels. Higher-end estimates reported by the World Bank suggest it could double.

The same is true of silver, which is critical to solar panels. Silver extraction will go up 38 percent and perhaps as much as 105 percent. Demand for indium, also essential to solar technology, will more than triple and could end up skyrocketing by 920 percent.

And then there are all the batteries we’re going to need for power storage. To keep energy flowing when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing will require enormous batteries at the grid level. This means 40 million tons of lithium—an eye-watering 2,700 percent increase over current levels of extraction."

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/09/06/the-path-to-clean-energy-will-be-very-dirty-climate-change-renewables/