From your reference-
"Does the high EROI for wind power presented here guarantee that wind will assume a major role in the world’s power generation system? There are a number of issues surrounding wind energy that require resolution before that happens. These issues have been discussed in detail elsewhere, and are summarized here:
The dramatic cost reductions in the manufacture of new wind turbines that has characterized the past two decades may be slowing [15] due to a variety of economic, financial, and technical reasons. Recently this is particularly true in light of the rising energy and commodity prices, which are slowly escalating turbine costs. The rising global demand for turbines is also driving prices upward.
The uncontrolled, intermittent nature of wind poses unique challenges to grid management relative to operator-controlled (baseload) resources such as coal, gas, or nuclear generation[16].
Much of the wind resource base is located in remote locations, so costs exist in getting wind-generated electricity from the local point-of-generation to a potentially distant load center.
The remoteness of the wind resource base also generates increased costs of developing land with difficult terrain or that which is increasingly removed from development infrastructure (such as major roads, rivers, or rails capable of trans-
porting the bulky and heavy construction equipment).
Little is known about the extent of these costs. At about 6 or 7 MW per square kilometer of net power potential, wind plants are necessarily spread-out over a significant land area [17]. Thus, wind plants must compete with alternative uses of these land resources. This is especially true
when the land is a significant source of aesthetic and/or recreational value.
Government subsidies have spurred the development of wind energy [18]. But subsidies are always subject to political whims, and thus constitute a significant issue for the wind industry, creating uncertainty for long-term planning and preventing
faster market development.
There is also concern about the impacts of wind energy on birds and bats [19].
Considerable additional research on operational wind facilities is required to provide a comprehensive assessment of the potential magnitude of these risks. None of these challenges are necessarily insurmountable. Indeed, some of them may be relatively modest in cost terms when fully assessed. The point here is simply that an EROI is crucial but is not independently a sufficient condition for the continued wide-spread expansion of wind energy."
So many things not calculated in the EROI due to uncertainties.
"Since mid-October, some 128 people on the island of Oahu have been arrested while protesting a wind energy project being built near the small village of Kahuku. The project is planned to include eight turbines standing 568 feet high. Many of the arrests occurred after protesters blocked trucks carrying equipment to the site. The protests continued on Nov. 1, when about 30 anti-wind protesters occupied the office of Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell for three hours."
"The refusal of all-renewable advocates to consider the cartoonish land requirements of their schemes and how those plans are affecting ordinary people in rural areas is perhaps the single biggest disconnect in the current energy debate. How cartoonish? Last year, two Harvard researchers found that meeting current U.S. electricity needs with wind would require covering a land area twice the size of California with wind turbines. That’s beyond Looney Tunes. "
"Meanwhile, in Germany, according to a recent article by Bloomberg columnist Leonid Bershidsky, wind turbines have become so unpopular that their construction “has all but ground to a halt.” He reports that “people hate the way the wind towers change landscapes. There’s even a German word for it, Verspargelung, roughly translated as pollution with giant asparagus sticks.” "
[url]https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/469870-hawaii-protests-show-why-w
ind-energy-cant-save-us-from-climate
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