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It's a pretty solarpunk fact that small, distributed wind turbines use steel more efficiently than big centralised ones (solar.lowtechmagazine.com)

submitted 1 month ago by frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml to c/energy@slrpnk.net

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The most steel-intensive power source – by far – is the modern wind turbine. The steel intensity of a wind turbine depends on its size. A single, large wind turbine requires significantly more steel per megawatt of installed power than two smaller wind turbines.

The link is from the-most-solarpunk-website and is mostly about steel in general, but I wanted to pull out that one fact.

Wind and solar energy are not "good for the environment"; they pollute; it's just that we hope they pollute less than the alternative. One major reason they pollute is because they require a lot of steel to build. But the household-scale or village-scale ones use less

de Decker is citing: Topham, Eva, et al. “Recycling offshore wind farms at decommissioning stage.” Energy policy 129 (2019): 698-709.

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[–] frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml -2 points 1 month ago

The larger the wind turbine the better an investment it is.

For better or worse our green transition is primarily capitalist. That matters a lot here.

Wind speeds are significantly higher every meter you get above the ground. The larger the blade the better it performs. Windmills can’t cluster together too closely since they induce turbulence…

It all means that bigger is better here.

I don't see anything punk about this at all, sorry. Reads anti-punk beginning to end.