 emissions and fossil fuel use savings of wind energy, let’s look at Spain’s success with wind energy.The data for Spain shows a remarkable success story of wind and solar energy drastically cutting Spain’s fossil fuel use and emissions. Between 2005 and 2009, Spain’s CO2 emissions from coal and natural gas consumption fell from 150.5 million metric tons to 117.1 million metric tons, a decline of 22% over just four years.
Electricity production from wind steadily grew from 20.1 billion kwh in 2005 to 34.8 billion kwh in 2009. Hydroelectric output also increased as a result of 2005 being a poor water year, going from 17.7 billion kwh in 2005 to 26.0 billion kwh in 2009. Total electricity generation in Spain was flat over this time period, with 272.1 billion kwh produced in 2005 and 275.1 billion kwh produced in 2009. So wind grew from providing 7.4% of the country’s electricity in 2005 to 12.6% in 2009, while hydroelectric increased from 6.5% to 9.5%.
Solar power also helped out by growing from almost zero output in 2005 to 5.8 billion kwh in 2009. Spain became a net exporter of electricity over that time period, going from exporting 1.3 billion kwh in 2005 to 8.1 billion kwh in 2009, so one can’t argue that an increased reliance on imports allowed Spain to keep its emissions low. If one wants to remove the impact variability in hydroelectric output may have on the results, one can use 2006 as the base year, since 2006 and 2009 had nearly identical hydroelectric output.
With 2006 as the base year, wind farm output increased from 22.1 billion kwh to 34.8 billion kwh, growing from 7.9% of electricity generation to 12.6% of electricity generation. CO2 emissions fell from 144.6 million metric tons in 2006 to 117.1 million metric tons in 2009, a decline of 19%. All of the data is available here:
Le Pair claims that it takes 1.5 years for a wind turbine to produce enough energy to offset the energy that was used to build and install the turbine. The only cited basis for this claim is a very rough back-of-the-envelope estimate from a private email sent to le Pair by an acquaintance.
Even worse, that estimate only roughly guesses at the energy needed for the steel and concrete, the two largest energy consuming components of a wind turbine, and then roughly doubles that number to account for other energy uses with no effort to precisely quantify those factors. Le Pair also assumes a 25% capacity factor for the wind turbine, even though typical wind turbines in the U.S. produce about 1/3 more energy than that. Correcting that discrepancy alone brings the energy payback time back to about one year.
In contrast to the rough and unsubstantiated estimates in le Pair’s work, a number of peer-reviewed studies have thoroughly accounted for the energy inputs and outputs for wind turbines and all have found the energy payback period to be around 6 months. Here are a couple of the comprehensive peer-reviewed analyses, each finding an energy payback period of under one year, that le Pair should have referenced instead of relying on an unsubstantiated back-of-the-envelope calculation:
Le Pair also entirely ignores the fact that a significant amount of energy and carbon emissions are involved in constructing and operating all types of conventional power plants and providing them with fuel . Coal, gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric plants are all built out of massive quantities of energy-intensive materials like concrete and steel. In addition, significant amounts of energy are involved in mining and transporting coal, natural gas, and nuclear fuel. Of course, the most important factor is that after the brief energy payback period a wind turbine will continue providing zero emissions energy for decades, while a fossil plant will continue to consume fossil fuels and belch pollution for decades. Again, all peer-reviewed analyses have concluded that the lifecycle emissions of wind farm plants are at most a small fraction of those from conventional plants.
Le Pair also makes the entirely unsubstantiated claim that wind plants have considerable onsite e