Comment by Barrin92
5 years ago
The raw material costs of producing and manufacturing windturbines has not been significantly reduced. You still need mostly as much stuff now to make one as you needed years ago, and the same goes for the transport of everything that goes into the turbine, because the energy density of electrical sources isn't high enough to say, power a containership.
You can't just wave away legitimate criticism by talking about "rapid innovation" that does not exist, mostly because it runs into physical limits.
> The raw material costs of producing and manufacturing windturbines has not been significantly reduced.
Perhaps, but we're talking about environmental concerns, not directly economical or material.
> You still need mostly as much stuff now to make one as you needed years ago
Suppose.
> and the same goes for the transport of everything that goes into the turbine, because the energy density of electrical sources isn't high enough to say, power a containership.
No, you're wrong here. Majority of pollutions from transport come from cars, and those demonstrated significant improvement over decades. More, there is no physical law forbidding transport ships using green energy sources - be that electrical (yes, batteries), wind (sails) or something else (hydrogen? nuclear?). And in fact we do see more and more examples of transport which runs on green sources - even planes.
Yes, batteries have lower energy density than gas. But batteries have enough energy density to be usable, and their characteristics improve lately; that's good enough for practical purposes. Not to mention, of course, theoretical possibility.