Why wind energy is quite alright
Examining 6 common arguments against wind energy
Authors: Aram Bernardos and Johanna Fulda
Aram Bernardos is a Renewable Energy Data Analyst at Clir. He studied molecular biology and behavioural neurogenetics and likes using his cognitive science insights to tell stories in an engaging and relatable way.
Johanna Fulda is a lead developer on the CX team and is into charts and data visualization — article’s charts and illustrations made by her. She has worked in journalism before and thinks combining data and storytelling is quite exciting.
At Clir we work with data from wind turbines. And even though most of us in the software team don’t have a formal education in renewable energies, we learn things along the way and try to keep up to date with news in the industry.
When talking about wind energy to people outside our Clir bubble we sometimes get confronted with “insights” about why wind turbines actually, “in all truth”, are really not that great: be that because they have seen the latest Michael Moore documentary or have read an article about nuclear energy and how much better for the planet that would be.
Below, we have put together a list of six common claims upheld by the anti-wind crowd and — using peer-reviewed studies and databases — evaluated to what extent they hold any truth.
1. The birds!
“Raptors, bats and other beautiful flying creatures are being sliced and diced by wind turbines”
We all like birds too and want them no harm — promise! Unfortunately it is true that turbines do hit one or the other bird and bat once in a while. That’s not ideal. The industry is aware of that and there are many strict rules that wind farm developers must follow before a wind farm is built. This is called “environmental assessment”. In Canada, for example, provincial and federal guidelines exist to ensure that wind farms won’t impact migration routes, habitats, or local species. That means during the site assessment phase there will be biologists evaluating what wild life is out there and how a wind farm project might affect it. If it’s in the middle of a migration path it won’t be built.
Additionally, environmental assessment does not end once the wind farm is built. Monitoring of biodiversity often continues post-construction to ensure that the impact remains minimal.
Now in the grand scheme of bird killings, wind turbines are really not the bad guys though. There are much worse enemies out there!
Top Threats to Birds in the U.S.
“But the eagles!”
It is true that there are different kinds of birds. And the ones being taken down by cats or buildings are usually not the regal eagles or other endangered and rare birds. So what about that?
A 2012 study that measured bird fatalities related to various power systems (wind, fossil-fuels, nuclear) found that non-renewable plants actually have a lot more birds on their conscience. Besides direct bird fatalities, the study also accounted for indirect damage to avian habitats that arise from power systems: including mountaintop removal and valley fill operations, coal mining, acid rain pollution, mercury pollution, uranium milling/mining, and anticipated impacts of climate change. The results from this study, per produced Gigawatt Hour (GWh) are shown here:
2. Raw Materials
“Building and recycling a wind turbine causes much more green house gas emission than the turbine can make up for during its lifetime”
Wind turbines contain tons of mechanical and electrical parts, which again are made out of many tiny parts. Here’s an example of material used in a 2.0MW Vestas turbine
Now what does this mean for greenhouse gas emission? The so called Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a standardized method to find out. It identifies various environmental impacts for the entire lifetime of a system — this includes raw materials, transportation, maintenance, and finally recycling and disposal.
This chart shows LCA results for various power sources. To ensure accuracy, LCA analyses from various groups — universities, governments, and industry — have been combined. There certainly are some disparities between the results of different interest groups, although the estimates end up being in the same ballpark. Most notably, wind power is trailing at the bottom for lowest LCA-measured environmental impact.
LCAs also show that the “energy payback time” (the time it takes to generate enough electricity to make up for the energy consumed during construction and installation) is about 3 to 8 months for wind energy, with offshore turbines having a slightly longer time than land-based ones.
As such, these studies indicate the energy invested in constructing a wind-farm — though substantial — is recouped within months of operation that the lifetime environmental impact is orders of magnitude less than that of traditional power sources.
3. Reliability
“Renewables are unreliable and require fossil fuel plants to back them up”
A common critique of wind energy is that it is “unreliable” due to the variability of environmental conditions. Wind speeds vary and, as such, so will the associated wind power that a turbine produces.
However, while it is true that wind power is variable it is not unpredictable. After all, the financiers behind a wind farm (i.e., lenders, debters, and owners) expect a payback on their investment.
If the variability of renewable power were a genuine issue, then we would expect there to be a positive correlation between a grid’s reliability and its dependence on renewables: i.e., a greater proportion of renewable energy would result in a less reliable grid.
To test this claim we plotted grid reliability by proportion renewables for OECD countries (i.e., high-income countries with a high Human Development Index). As you can see, there is no correlation.
Until renewables represent 20-50% of the grid, most researchers believe that backup power can be supported by existing fossil fuel plants. After that, nobody knows for sure, but grid reliability can very likely be achieved by:
- Enhancing inter-regional transmission infrastructure
- Improving demand-side management strategies
- Improving wind forecasts
- Oversizing renewable energy capacity and storing excess production
- Backing supply gaps with non-variable renewable energy sources like hydroelectric, biomass, or geothermal energy
The possibility of a 100% renewable grid is also supported by the convenient tendency for wind and solar to complement each other. Wind speed tends to increase at night, causing turbines to generate more electricity, while solar irradiance increases during the day.
As such, while it is true that there are challenges to achieving a grid that is 100% powered by renewable sources we will only be confronted by these when we achieve 20–50% renewables penetration. Currently, there is no evidence to suggest a fundamental association between renewable power and grid unreliably. In fact, investment in renewables reduces a country’s dependence on fossil fuels which are vulnerable to price-supply instability and often imported from remote places.
4. How about Uranium
“Nuclear energy is much cleaner!”
It’s true that — once built — nuclear power plants have zero carbon emissions; however, if you consider the construction and maintenance of these plants, then nuclear power is usually estimated to be more carbon-intensive than wind power per produced energy unit. Also it is non-renewable since it depends on uranium which is a non-renewable fuel source. Oh, and we still haven’t figured out this whole nuclear waste management issue.
5. Health
“Wind turbines cause electromagnetic fields, shadow flicker, low-frequency noise, and infrasound which cause headache, dizziness, deep nervous fatigue and symptoms akin to seasickness.”
Sometimes called “Wind Turbine Syndrome”, researchers have found that incidences correlate more with the afflicted person’s attitude towards a wind farm and that person’s exposure to media coverage of the syndrome rather than with the presence or absence of wind farms. In other words, local residents who perceive the decision to build the wind farm as fair, transparent, and communal usually don’t report health issues.
Indeed, a systematic review of 60 studies on Wind Turbine Syndrome found no health effects associated with living near wind turbines. While noise and shadow flicker produced by wind turbines may annoy nearby residents, the researchers clarified that these issues have long been corrected by stringent location regulations: which ensure that developers of wind farms account for factors including sound emission, ice-throw distances, and shadow flicker. In sum, wind turbines do not have any adverse health effects (real or perceived) if the site is chosen properly and the local community is consulted.
The image below shows an example of the minimum noise setback (distance) requirements for a wind farm in Ontario, Canada.
6. Price
“Renewable energy is more expensive”
This might have been true a few years ago, but if we check today’s data, newly installed wind and solar projects are undercutting the cheapest existing coal plants. Here’s one last chart from a Lazard analysis.
The reason behind wind energy becoming cheaper is turbines are getting cheaper, bigger, and better. The operation and maintenance strategies of turbines are also improving — which, by the way, is one of the areas Clir is working on. Developments in wake steering, wind sector management, conditioned-based maintenance, and weather/power forecasting allow operators to squeeze more out of their machines. Together, these milestones in technology, operations, and maintenance mean that wind turbines can effectively produce energy even in regions with suboptimal wind conditions.
In 2020, British Columbia has an average cost of residential electricity (based on an average monthly consumption of 1,000 kWh) of 12.4 Canadian cents per kWh. The Canadian average is 17.4 (with Quebec having the lowest price: 7.3; Northwest Territories the highest: 38.7). Since this amount also contains the cost for the infrastructure to deliver that energy to our homes and the operational costs of the energy provider it means that in the end the cost of electricity generation alone is only something like 2 to 4 cents per kWh. But according to the latest Wind Technologies Market Report, wind energy is totally playing in that ballpark these days.
“But that is just because wind is heavily subsidized”
Right, there have been (and still are) subsidies or tax credits for building and operating wind farms. In the US for example the Renewable Electricity Production Tax Credit provided a tax subsidy of up to 2.3 cents per produced kWh (for the first 10 years of operation). Most market analyses use a levelized cost though (as does the chart above) which excludes that tax credit and the Berkeley Lab’s 2020 market report found that it costs something around 3 cents to produce one kWh today — down from around 8.5-9 about 10 years ago.
The commercial viability of wind and solar technologies has resulted in many countries — including the USA and Australia — eliminating renewable power subsidies and tax credits. This means that solar and wind power are emerging as mature industries, capable of competing in the market on their own terms. Way to go renewables!
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