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.
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.
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 disagree with anything you said. I was only pointing out an additional benefit outside of the one the post mentions.
I don’t see anything punk about this at all, sorry. Reads anti-punk beginning to end.
All in all, it is roughly 9% of greenhouse gas emissions