How to Escape From the Iron Age?
solar.lowtechmagazine.com
We cannot lower carbon emissions if we keep producing steel with fossil fuels.

The most steel-intensive power source – by far – is the modern wind turbine. The steel intensity of a wind turbine depends on its size. A single, large wind turbine requires significantly more steel per megawatt of installed power than two smaller wind turbines.

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.

  • growsomethinggood ()
    8·
    5 days ago

    Sonori is completely right here, and it feels in bad faith to critique the semantics of their comment rather than the substance of them.

    One of the things that is difficult about solarpunk is that there is a huge divide between where we currently are and where we want/need to be. Smaller turbines for a more distributed power grid is a part of a great future to look towards! But it’s not the reality of our power demands now, which necessitate larger turbines and more steel production to meet any of our climate goals. Speaking coherently through that divide can really lead to mismatched expectations and miscommunications.