How to Escape From the Iron Age?
solar.lowtechmagazine.com
We cannot lower carbon emissions if we keep producing steel with fossil fuels.

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.

  • Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.worldEnglish
    111·
    2 months ago

    Steel can be pretty easily recycled, so it’s not too bad all in all.

    An addition benefit of using smaller but wider scale turbines is the reduced need for electrical transmission lines. A large chunk of our problems is the transmission lines needing updated/expanded on to handle more electrification.

    • frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.mlOP
      21·
      2 months ago

      Steel can be pretty easily recycled, so it’s not too bad all in all.

      All in all, it is roughly 9% of greenhouse gas emissions