Renewable Energy

[ysabetwordsmith]

The Costs of Renewable Energy

Experts are really far apart on what such a world-wide renewable infrastructure would cost.


There are also costs other than financial. Take wind power. To flying creatures (bats, birds, butterflies, etc.) those are whirling blades of doom. Less dangerous models exist, but are less popular as they tend to be more expensive and/or less efficient. Then there is the problem of noise and vibration. Up close, it's usually miserable for people. Farther away, even the subliminal effects can cause problems like headaches and distraction. In other words, it's not good to put a wind farm near where people live, where "near" can mean 3-5 miles.

Comments

[hafnia]

The bird numbers are trivial compared to fossil fuels. The number is not zero, but there are ways to reduce it (outlined in the article, they don't require significant infrastructure changes to existing turbines), and it is extremely low compared to deaths linked to fossil fuels.

I have thoughts on the linked article, but without going very deep into technical talk, which I don't want to do on DW, I'm not sure it's worth it.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

I had not compared windmill deaths to fossil fuel deaths, so that's useful.

However, it doesn't make the area around a windfarm habitable for humans. Just one on a farm seems to be tolerable for more people, but with a hundred of the things, not so much.