Ther are always pros and cons. A few years ago WY had an issue with tons of retired wind mill blades that would have to be buried in a landfill, and the news media made a big deal out of how green energy wasn't green. WY is oil and gas country so the general objection wasn't a big surprise (although most of the power plants there are coal fired). My dad was a millwright who worked on most of the turbines when the power plants in that area were built.
But in the interest of fairness, and now being from NC where Duke Energy's incredibly poor management of toxic coal as is a huge problem, I looked at the number of kilowatts of electricity produced by those blades in the field in question over their 20 year life span. I then looked at the mount of coal ash produced in WY power plants to produce the same kilowatts of power.
Interestingly, the tins of toxic coal ash was 187 times greater than the retired blades that would have to be buried.
More importantly the composite materials in hose blades is stable, and won't leach into the ground water, so all it has to be is buried. In contrast that toxic coal ash has to be buried in a pit sealed with non porous material and then covered with more non porous material and then top soil. Then it, and the surrounding water tables have to be monitored and when problems are inevitably found decades later, it has to be remediated.
So yes, blades wear out and have to be replaced and disposed of and it's not perfectly green. It is a *lot* greener than "clean coal" technology.
—-
I grew up in western and central SD and my dad, as a millwright also worked on the turbines in the Oahe dam when it was constructed in the early 1960s. Not counting the other dams ion the Missouri River in South Dakota it flooded over 350,000 acres of prime bottom land and along with the other dams effectively severed a long standing wildlife migration corridor.
Poor management by the Corps of Engineers that prioritizes both power generation (and a $300,000 per year barge traffic industry farther down stream) has also resulted in major flooding (something it was intended to prevent, with a massive flood in 2011, and frequently fails to maintain water levels during the spawning season which significantly impacts the fishing tourism industry in the state.
On the plus side it does generate power that is available on demand at peak times. (But SD doesn't see any of it, it's sent farther south in the power grid).
Nationally, hydro electric power accounts for only about 15% of power generation but it's flexibility is critical to prevent brown outs during peak load periods.
California and the desert southwest is about to figure that out as water levels drop to the point that power generation can no longer occur.
——
Anyone remember Three Mile Island? They had a failure in a secondary system and a stuck valve in the primary coolant system that resulted in a loss of reactor cooling water, which the operators failed to recognize.
Yet, even with two separate failures and the inspiration for Homer Simpson at the helm, the containment system still worked as designed with minimal release of radiation. The lasting effect of the accident was a results of anti nuclear activists coming unglued and effectively stopping nuclear development in the US. Of 129 unclear power plants approved for construction when the TMI accident happened only 53 were completed.
Those uncompleted nuclear power plants that were cancelled were replaced with more coal fired power plants, which resulted in acid rain, coal ash runoff and other water quality issues that became obvious in the 1990s, and crested far more health and environmental issues than nuclear power.
——-
Electric vehicles are not going to be an effective solution if we don't find a cleaner way than coal to charge the batteries in them.
- Molten Salt Reactor technology is one promising possibility, but again the chicken headed nuclear activists will object to that.
- wind and solos energy are no doubt part of the solution, but they will need to be accompanied by better energy storage technology.
Flying over the Appalachians I have observed reservoirs on top of hills that are in fact energy storage systems. Excess wind and or solar energy is used to pump water from a river or lake uphill to a storage pond. Then during peak periods, or at night or when the wind isn't blowing the water is released back down the hill turning the impellers in the pumps to generate electricity.
- battery technology and restyling the materials in those batteries to make new batteries is also rapidly improving and that will be essential to make the cars themselves greener.
Unfortunately, all of the above will be opposed by people who are not willing to look beyond sound bites, memes and hit pieces from their preferred news sources owned and managed by folks with a vested interest in delaying necessary change as long as possible to maximize profits from the oil, gas and coal industries.
Instead we should all be interested in learning about the wider range of options with an open mind and an eye to what's in *our* interests and not the folks feeding us stories like retired wind mill blades, while leaving out the entire other side of the issue.
