Here’s a startling fact to begin the New Year: Wind turbines do NOT produce any energy at all, full stop
The First law of Thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be converted from one form to another.
So-called “renewables” should more accurately be called energy collectors. They collect energy that already exists, in the form of wind or sunlight, and convert what little there is into electricity.
Therein lies the perpetual problem. If it is dark, still and cold, typical midwinter conditions, there is no energy to collect, thereby literally leaving us in the dark! As we discovered recently, in frosty December, wind “energy” is a technological dead-end. The intrinsically better sources have what is known as greater energy density. For example, water is 800 times denser than air, so hydro is always going to give a much greater conversion capture than wind. Coal is intrinsically denser than wood, so much more thermodynamically efficient. A coal fire burns much hotter than wood.
Nuclear, working at atomic level, wins the energy density stakes hands down.
The other hugely damaging problem with “unreliables” is their truly voracious material and land requirements. At present, all the world’s energy plants occupy around 0. 5 per cent of the earth’s surface. Trying to capture all our energy from solar and wind would require an astonishing 50 per cent of the Earth’s surface!
This will leave virtually nowhere for farming, food production, forests, fishing, nature, wildlife habitats, recreation or us.
Before the planet is completely carpeted, and wrecked with “renewables” it is high time the collective density of our deluded, ever-so-green, politicians realised this!
Yours, trying to protect our natural world, not destroy it
George Herraghty, Elgin, Moray
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