Things People Don't Realize About Wind Energy and Why We Can't Shut Down Oil Production

Creative Commons. © Hans Hillewaert

When the Biden administration recently approved the proposed Atlantic Shores offshore wind farm in New Jersey, the Sierra Club rejoiced. While many who long for the elimination of fossil fuels are celebrating, it might be useful to learn more about the role oil plays with regard to the ever expanding wind turbine push.

Few people realize how much fossil fuels are required to get electricity from wind. When we look at wind turbines, those towering giants you see on wind farms, we're looking into the face of green energy. But here's the twist: while they capture wind, a totally free and eco-friendly resource, the turbines themselves are actually built and maintained using fossil fuels.

Until I read Vaclav Smil's Numbers Don't Lie, I had no idea of the degree to which fossil fuels are needed to manufacture a single wind tower, even though I was involved in the wind business to a certain extent. (AMSOIL makes gear lubes for these wind-driven power plants)

Here's an excerpt from Smil's book.

 

Large trucks bring steel, and other raw materials to the site, earth-moving equipment beats the path to otherwise inaccessible high ground, large cranes erect the structures – and all these machines burn diesel fuel. So do the freight trains and cargo ships that convey the materials needed for the production of cement, steel, and plastics. For a 5 MW turbine, the steel alone averages 150 tons for the reinforced concrete foundations, 250 tons for the rotor hubs and nacelles (which house the gearbox and generator) and 500 tons for the towers.

If wind generated electricity were to supply 25% of global demand by 2030, then even with a high average capacity factor of 35% the aggregate installed wind power of about 2.5 terawatts would require roughly 450,000,000 tons of steel. And that’s without counting the metal for towers, wires, and transformers for the new high voltage transmission lines that would be needed to connect it all to the grid.

Making steel also takes a ton of energy, Smil writes. It starts with sintered or pelletized iron ore that gets smelted in blast furnaces filled with coke made from coal. They also add powdered coal and natural gas to the mix. The pig iron produced in these blast furnaces is then decarbonized in basic oxygen furnaces. After that, the steel goes through continuous casting, which shapes the molten steel into rough forms of the final product. For turbine construction, the steel used typically contains about 35 gigajoules of energy per ton.

 

To make the steel required for the wind turbines we want by 2030, Smil writes, you need fossil fuels equivalent to more than 600 million tons of coal. 

This is before we consider the 60-meter long airfoils, each of which weighs 15 tons. Making these giant blades also requires hydrocarbons--liquefied petroleum, gas or natural gas.

That's not all. Smil adds still more including the cost of fiber-reinforced composite material, water-proofing with resins, rotors and the gearbox itself. Then you have the lubricants for those gearboxes, which must be changed from time to time like the oil change on your typical car or truck, albeit not as often but on a very large scale.

Undoubtedly, and lastly, Smil suggests that a new wind turbine will generate as much energy as it took to produce it, but it will be in the form of intermittent energy production. (i.e. the turbines turn only when the wind blows.)

Generating electricity – installation, production and maintenance -- remain critically dependent on specific fossil energies. Moreover, most of these energies -- coke for iron ore smelting; coal and petroleum coke to fuel cement kilns; naphtha and natural gas as feedstock and fuel for synthesis of plastics and the making of fiberglass; diesel fuel for ships, trucks, and construction machinery; lubricant for gearboxes – we have no non-fossil substitutes readily available on the requisite large commercial scale.

Smil sumsup his chapter thus: For a long time to come – until all energy that is used to produce wind turbines and photovoltaic cells comes from renewable energy sources – modern civilization will be fundamentally dependent on fossil fuels.

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See: Made in the USA: The Rise and Retreat of American Manufacturing Is A Humbling Warning